Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health. Therefore, understanding and investigating the underlying mechanisms is necessary to reduce drug resistance. To boost the current research and development of new antibiotics that will help in the effective management of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, WHO has published its first-ever list of priority pathogens.   The World Health Organization (WHO) recently published, for the first time, a list of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, priority pathogen, from 12 families that pose the greatest threat to human health and urgently need new antibiotics to treat them. This WHO pathogen priority list was developed in collaboration with the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Tübingen, Germany using a multi-criteria decision analysis technique. The criteria for selecting these priority pathogens on the list were: How deadly are the infections they cause?  Whether their treatment requires long hospital stays? How often are they resistant to current antibiotics? Whether they can be prevented by good hygiene and vaccination? Whether new antibiotics to treat them are already in the R&D pipeline? WHO priority pathogens list for R&D of new antibiotics The WHO list is divided into three categories according to the urgency of the need for new antibiotics: Priority 1: CRITICAL Acinetobacter baumannii, carbapenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa, carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, carbapenem-resistant, ESBL-producing Priority 2: HIGH Enterococcus faecium, vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, methicillin-resistant, vancomycin-intermediate and resistant Helicobacter pylori, clarithromycin-resistant Campylobacter spp., fluoroquinolone-resistant Salmonellae, fluoroquinolone-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae, cephalosporin-resistant, fluoroquinolone-resistant Priority 3: MEDIUM Streptococcus pneumoniae, penicillin-non-susceptible Haemophilus influenzae, ampicillin-resistant Shigella spp., fluoroquinolone-resistant Notably, the list highlights particularly the threat of gram-negative bacteria that are resistant to multiple antibiotics. Moreover, tuberculosis – whose resistance to traditional treatment has been growing in recent years is not included in the list because it is targeted by several other specific and dedicated programs. According to WHO, this first global priority pathogen list is an important new tool to secure and guide research and development related to new antibiotics. However, to address this global issue of antibiotic-resistance, there must also be the better prevention of infections and rationale use of existing as well as novel antibiotics that will be developed in future. Source: WHO