Nomen est omen: why we need to rename ‘antimicrobial resistance’

Abstract

The naming of diseases is a critical aspect of public health communication. In light of the recent renaming of the ‘Wuhan novel coronavirus’ to COVID-19, the names of other health threats must be reviewed. In particular, a new name is urgently needed for the global challenge typically referred to as ‘antimicrobial resistance’. The current name is inconsistently used, difficult to pronounce and lacks meaning for lay audiences. It also fails to express the magnitude of the phenomenon’s potential consequences for human medicine. This article reviews and evaluates key findings from several cross-disciplinary streams of research on the psycholinguistic properties of names. These include early psychology literature pertaining to the concept of ‘word attensity’, recent cognitive research on ‘processing fluency’ in the context of word recognition, and relevant marketing literature examining the components of successful branding strategies. Three key criteria—pronounceability, meaningfulness and specificity—are found to influence the perception of names and these are discussed in the context of antimicrobial resistance. The article demonstrates that the current term of ‘antimicrobial resistance’ falls short with regard to all three criteria and concludes with specific recommendations for the creation of a new name. Only the strategic choice of a single term that is (i) short and easy to pronounce; (ii) intuitively meaningful to lay audiences and indicative of the existential threat linked to antimicrobial resistance; and (iii) uniquely associated with the topic of antimicrobial resistance is likely to bring about overdue change in the global discussion of antimicrobial resistance.

Finding What Is Inaccessible: Antimicrobial Resistance Language Use among the One Health Domains

“…This was unexpected, but the decrease in frequency use of “antibiotic resistance” and “AR” key terms suggests that authors may be narrowing their scope of AMR research to identify more closely with specific research objectives (e.g., limited to a single gene) rather than a broader scope discussing “antibiotic resistance” in general. Additionally, Krockow [ 32 ] argued that a new name is needed for AMR due to the inconsistent use of AMR in the literature, difficulty in pronunciation, and unclear meaning to lay audiences, but a new name was not suggested. Our analysis shows that the literature is already starting to move away from the more general AMR term to more specific terms within sub-fields in the One Health context.…”

Tackling AMR from a multidisciplinary perspective: a primer from education and psychology

“…By empowering the general population and promoting social responsibility amongst it, situations such as the overprescription of antibiotics could also be slowed down. This is particularly important in light of a recent systematic review that showed that even when confronted with the link between overprescribing and AMR, prescribers considered it futile to change their prescription behaviour (Krockow 2020 ).…”

Resetting the agenda for antibiotic resistance through a health systems perspective

“…The plethora of terms describing microbial drug resistance has created a language barrier, which continues to be discussed. [14][15][16] We believe that the grouping of bacterial resistance with resistance in other microbes (ie, viruses, fungi, and parasites) under the umbrella of antimicrobial resistance has diffused the focus on antibiotic resistance.…”

“…The plethora of terms describing microbial drug resistance has created a language barrier, which continues to be discussed. 14 , 15 , 16 We believe that the grouping of bacterial resistance with resistance in other microbes (ie, viruses, fungi, and parasites) under the umbrella of antimicrobial resistance has diffused the focus on antibiotic resistance. Although resistance is a problem with all antimicrobial drugs, antibiotics are used more than any other class of antimicrobials and need a more prominent position in the narrative.…”