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A patient with a severe infection is prescribed a potent antibiotic. Hopes for improvement are high, but just after treatment is given, resistance to the drug increases thousands of times. How could this happen?
Scientists at the University of Washington School of Medicine report an unexpected mechanism in a paper published July 23 in Nature Microbiology.
“Resistance developing inside patients was thought to be caused by the accumulation of mutations in the bacterial genome,” said Dr. Sardar Karash, a research assistant professor of microbiology and the study’s lead author. “Because this process is gradual, physicians have time to react.”
However, the researchers noticed people with cystic fibrosis, or CF, who did not fit this pattern. People with CF develop devastating lung infections and get intensive antibiotic treatment. In some patients antibiotic resistance increased by more than 10,000-fold, right after antibiotics were started.
