Study: This Killer Disease Could Out Kill Cancer by 2050 -- What is it?

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Cancer is one of the major causes of death in the world along with heart disease and HIV/AIDS. However, researchers for the O'Neill Commission predicted a new type of killer disease could overtake cancer's spot by 2050. It will happen if no proper action is going to be done today.

Published as a "Review on Antimicrobial Resistance" in the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, the researchers stressed that an alarming rate of medicine-resistant infections could kill more people than cancer in the future. The current rate of death in relation to these cases was pegged at 700,000 in 2015, but it is projected to grow by 10 million in 2050.

The experts noted that people have become used to taking antibiotics for treating even common illnesses, thus making the drugs less effective against infection over the time. Drug companies are also making fewer antibiotics and the concern is that, eventually, diseases treatable today may not be treatable in the future, per Fox News.

Developing antibiotics that can work against recent strains have become least of the priorities for pharmaceutical companies, according to Jim O'Neill of Project Syndicate. The agency provides politicians, scholars, business and civic leaders in-depth analysis on world issues.

"As valuable as scientific breakthroughs may be, it takes a lot of work to turn them into marketable drugs. And, because antibiotics generally produce low - and sometimes even negative - returns on investment for the pharmaceutical makers that develop them, many companies and venture capital funds steer clear," wrote O'Neill for The Guardian. His team estimated the cost for fighting medicine-resistant infection could rise to $100 trillion a year.

The review also pointed out that antibiotics are now commonly found in the world's agriculture products that affects food intake. Hence, the commission suggested either cutting back or banning its use so that its effectivity won't be compromised further, per Medical Daily.

"I find it staggering that in many countries, most of the consumption of antibiotics is in animals rather than humans," O'Neill said. "This creates a bid resistance risk for everyone, which was highlighted by the recent Chinese finding of resistance to colistin, an important last-resort antibiotic that has been used extensively in animals."

The review comes at a time when the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made pronouncements it will renew its focus on antibiotics resistance in 2016. "We must preserve these miracle medications so we can avoid returning to the pre-antibiotic era when minor infections often led to death," the CDC stated in its media kit.