Using evolutionary principles to prevent antibiotic resistance

A research report published by eLife stated that sequential treatment with similar but often interchangeable antibiotics is an effective way to kill bacteria and prevent drug resistance

This result challenges the widespread hypothesis that the use of similar antibiotics will promote drug cross-resistance, and shows that existing antibiotics can provide unexplored, highly effective treatment options

"We are currently in the antibiotic crisis.

The research team used a bacterium called P.

To the research team’s surprise, the treatment with two beta-lactam antibiotics was better than some unrelated antibiotics in killing bacterial populations

They studied the P.

They also studied whether the physiological changes caused by the drug treatment made the bacteria resistant or more sensitive to other drugs in the sequence

Senior author Hinrich Schulenburg said: "Although the use of antibiotic-like sequential therapy should accelerate the evolution of resistance, we have found that if resistance to one antibiotic does not emerge easily, and if the antibiotics show indirect sensitivity to each other Sex, this is not the case

This research has been published as part of eLife's "Evolutionary Medicine: Special Issue"

10.

High potency of sequential therapy with only β-lactam antibiotics