Work to instill a more effective and rational use of antibiotics to prevent and investigate drug resistance arising. This is the aim of the 7th Research Day of the Catalan Institute of Health on June 16. About 200 researchers from the eight research institutes linked to the organization will participate in a meeting that will focus on two main areas. On the one hand the advances in diagnostic methodologies of resistance and sensitivity faster than today to choose the right antibiotic in each case, and to review the main problems of antimicrobial resistance antibiotics. And, secondly, optimizing antimicrobial use in primary care and also commissioning in hospitals transversal programs to make good use of antibiotics.

In this line, attendees will know what the current European strategy on antimicrobial resistance is in a presentation by Alfonso Bertran, deputy director of International Programs at the Carlos III Institute.

During the conference also will be released the names of the researchers who will receive the Lifetime Achievement Awards researcher at the ICS 2015. This prize, worth 10,000 euros, promotes biomedical research institution of higher quality.

The widespread use of antibiotics to treat all kinds of infections since the 40s, has gradually led to the development of resistance mechanisms that have left us almost no therapeutic tools to combat a growing number of microorganisms.

The head of the research group on Infections on the respiratoty tract and in

Immunocomproimised host at IDIBELL and chief of infectious diseases at the University Hospital of Bellvitge, Jordi Carratalá said that “the resistance of microorganisms to antibiotics has become a big problem public health and one of the biggest health challenges of the century “.

According to an article published in June in the journal JAMA, in 2050 more than 800,000 people will die in developed countries by related causes antibiotic resistance.

Carratalá explains that this problem “compromises the whole practice of medicine from simple surgical procedures such as appendicitis to complex, such as hematopoietic stem cell transplant or solid organ”.

“Due to the lack of new antibiotics, particularly against gram-negative microorganisms, one of the key measures to address the problem of antimicrobial resistance is to optimizing what we already have” the researcher explains.