New Delhi: Antibiotic susceptibility in resistant bacteria is not static. New research shows that bacteria harbouring resistance genes may respond differently to antibiotics if they are tested under conditions other than those used in standard laboratory assays. This may affect how well an antibiotic treatment works.
New research from DTU, published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, indicates that the outcome of a resistance measurement may depend on the conditions under which the bacterium is tested.
Standard laboratory tests are carried out under fixed, uniform conditions, but if, for example, the test environment is altered, the very same bacterium may in some cases be either more or less susceptible to an antibiotic than the laboratory result indicates.
However, standard conditions do not necessarily reflect all the environments bacteria encounter in real life.
Understanding how antimicrobial resistance develops and spreads is crucial, as antibiotic resistance has become an imminent threat to global public health. In the longer term, the research may, therefore, contribute to a better understanding of how resistance is expressed in different environments, and why resistance may develop and spread.
