Infection Inspection

What is antibiotic resistance?

Antibiotics are life-saving medicines used to control bacterial infections. They block essential operations of bacterial cells and either kill them or limit their growth. Without antibiotics, common infections, surgery, childbirth, and cancer treatment would be much more dangerous. Around the world today, antibiotics increase life expectancy by an average of 20 years.

Antibiotic resistance happens when some bacteria acquire genetic mutations that help them survive antibiotic treatment. Our widespread use of antibiotics has made antibiotic-resistant bacteria more common. Currently, antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections cause about 700,000 deaths per year worldwide and, if we do nothing, this may rise to 10 million deaths per year by 2050.

What can we do about antibiotic resistance?

Tests that detect if an infection is caused by bacteria resistant to antibiotics will help save lives and conserve antibiotics, because more effective and targeted antibiotics can be prescribed. These tests exist, but they take a day or more to complete. When patients are very sick and a bacterial infection is suspected, they must be prescribed broad antibiotics based on epidemiological data.

We are developing a test to detect infectious bacteria, identify the species, and determine whether they are sensitive to common antibiotics. A sample will be filtered, imaged with a microscope, and analysed by a computer to give these results within 1 hour. You can help us learn what antibiotic-resistant bacteria look like under our microscope.

How you can help

We have collected thousands of images of resistant and sensitive bacteria that have been treated with antibiotics. Bacteria that are sensitive to an antibiotic treatment develop changes to their shape, DNA, and cell wall as the antibiotic interferes with their functions of life. We have built a machine learning tool that can recognise these changes in sensitive bacteria, but human-annotated data will help us better understand the features of resistant bacteria, especially in cases when the computer and human predictions differ. Your participation will help us understand what makes a bacterium "confusing" to classify and these results will help us improve the accuracy of our test.

In addition to classifying our images, you can help our research by spreading the word about the project and what you've learned about bacteria and antibiotic resistance.

More Resources

This article written by the Chief Medical Officer for England Professor Dame Sally Davies and the Chief Medical Officer's Private Secretary Rebecca Sugden explains the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and actions we might take to tackle the problem of antimicrobial resistance.
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/reports/thenhsif/what-if-antibiotics-stopped-working/

This page from the Microbiology Society contains resources for further reading about current research on antimicrobial resistance, its impact on sustainable development and global health, new strategies for tackling the problem, and links to scientific journal content. Explore if you're curious about the science and want to learn more!
https://microbiologysociety.org/our-work/antimicrobial-resistance/resources-and-further-reading.html