Searcher -Antibiotic Resistance-

In class, we discussed ways to fight against unicellular organisms. One way was with antibiotics. We said that a big problem with using antibiotics to combat some types of diseases was that bacteria eventually form a resistance and the antibiotic becomes less and less effective.  That got me thinking, “can we somehow work around the bacteria’s ability to resist antibiotics?” Turns out, according to the study, “A Population Model Evaluating the Consequences of the Evolution of Double-Resistance and Tradeoffs on the Benefits of Two-Drug Antibiotic Treatments,” (phew, that’s a mouthful) there are ways to work around unicellular organisms’ ability to form resistances by using more than one antibiotic at once.

The study compares the effectiveness measured in patient recovery time and the bacteria’s formation of resistance of different methods of administrating antibiotics to patients. The methods that were tested were cocktail, when two antibiotics are taken together at the same time; cycling, which is taking one antibiotic and then switching to another after a set amount of time; mixing, which is taking one antibiotic and then switching back and forth; and single, which is taking only one antibiotic. More information on definitions can be found on page 4. What I found most intriguing was that “the two-drug combined COCKTAIL treatment, even when facing single- and double-resistance, can outperform a single drug treatment in the absence of resistance (cf. CONTROL).” (Cambell, 6)

--Here is the link to the study--

http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=9&sid=8cc061d5-36d2-4973-934e-98cc0ac28413%40sessionmgr4003&hid=4114

--If the first one does not work, here is another link that might--

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0086971