Delhi’s smog isn’t just choking lungs. A JNU study published in Nature has found levels of airborne antibiotic-resistant bacteria – ‘superbugs’ – in the winter air that exceed WHO’s exposure limits by 16 times.
When researchers sampled indoor and outdoor air across markets, homes, and sewage plants, they found skyrocketing concentrations of multidrug-resistant staphylococci (MRS).
Cold, dry, and heavy, winter smog traps microbes near the ground, giving them surfaces to survive and letting them persist longer. Breathing this air increases the risk of pneumonia, UTIs, and other hard-to-treat bloodstream infections.
The good news? Startups like Bengaluru-based Bugworks, which was founded by Dr. Anand Anandkumar, Dr. Santanu Datta, and Dr. V. Balasubramanian, are working to tackle India’s superbug crisis head-on.
So how is Bugworks doing that? By creating a novel class of antibiotics – a first in almost 50 years – with broad-spectrum activity against WHO-listed ‘global priority’ pathogens.
For instance, one of their drug candidates targets gram-negative infections like Acinetobacter baumannii and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which are often untreatable with current antibiotics.
In a country that sees superbugs kill 60,000 newborns a year, Bugworks’ efforts to build homegrown solutions that combat antibiotic resistance could save millions of lives.