AI Drug Resistance

Scientists in the United Kingdom and China have announced plans to use artificial intelligence on chicken farms in order to combat the problem of antibiotic resistance in both farm animals and humans. The new initiative will use machine learning to find ways to track and prevent disease on poultry farms, reducing the need for antibiotic treatment in chickens and therefore lowering the risk of antibiotic-resistant bacteria transferring to people. Now, antibiotic resistance is a worldwide problem and it's getting worse and worse. Some of these superbugs are resistant to everything. On farms, superbugs are not confined to animals. They spread to humans and to the environment, which is an exponential spread. And antibiotics work by disrupting function in certain parts of a bacterial cell. Bacteria become resistant to antibiotics through genetic mutations that alter those areas of the cell, meaning the medication can no longer target them. The more a strain of bacteria is exposed to an antibiotic, the more likely it is to become resistant. Large numbers of people and animals are given antibiotics when they don't need them, so reducing unnecessary consumption is crucial in the fight against so-called superbugs.