More than 40% of infection-related deaths in Americas associated with antimicrobial resistance

August 08, 2023

2 min read

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Disclosures:
Aguilar and Swetschinski report no relevant financial disclosures. Please see the study for all other authors’ relevant financial disclosures.

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Key takeaways:

• In 2019, 569,000 deaths were associated with bacterial antimicrobial resistance in the Americas.
• The deadliest pathogens were Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Streptococcus pneumoniae.

More than two out of every five infection-related deaths in the Americas in 2019 were associated with bacterial antimicrobial resistance, according to a new study.

Deaths attributable to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in the 35 countries that make up the Americas accounted for more than 11% of the total global deaths attributable to resistant infections, researchers found.

The study also identified the countries with the highest and lowest rates of death associated with AMR, and the pathogens most commonly responsible.

“Our research shows which countries in the Americas differed by type of infection, pathogen, antibiotic resistance and age,” Gisela Robles Aguilar, PhD, DPhil, research officer at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, said in a press release. “That’s important information that will help those in power to take the necessary steps to enact new policies, improve sanitation and develop new treatments to stop AMR in its tracks.”

The researchers estimated deaths and disability-adjusted life-years either attributed to or associated with AMR for 23 bacterial pathogens and 88 pathogen-drug combinations for all 35 countries in the WHO Region of the Americas using data from mortality registries, surveillance systems and other health data sources.

Deaths “associated” with AMR refer to drug-resistant infections that contributed to the death of a patient who may have had underling conditions that were also responsible for their death. “Attributable” deaths refer to deaths directly caused by an untreatable infection.

Based on the data, the researchers estimated that there were 569,000 deaths associated with bacterial AMR and 141,000 deaths attributable to bacterial AMR among the 35 countries in the Americas in 2019.

Lower respiratory and thorax infections were responsible for the largest fatal burden of AMR, followed by bloodstream infections and peritoneal/intra-abdominal infections.

The six deadliest pathogens, which were associated with 452,000 AMR-associated deaths, were Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Acinetobacter baumannii.

The five countries with the highest AMR-related death rates were Haiti, Bolivia, Guatemala, Guyana and Honduras. The 10 countries with the lowest rates were Canada, the United States, Colombia, Cuba, Panama, Costa Rica, Chile, Venezuela, Uruguay and Jamaica.

“Bacteria have developed resistance against the medicines we invented to kill them, and these pathogens are instead killing people at rates that are higher than HIV/AIDS or malaria,” Lucian Swetschinski, MSc, research scientist at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, said in the release. “If policymakers, clinicians, scientists and even the general public don’t implement new measures now, this global health crisis will worsen and could become uncontrollable.”

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