Temporal variation in antibiotic environments slows down resistance evolution in pathogenic Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

ABSTRACT: Antibiotic resistance is a growing concern to public health. New treatment strategies may alleviate the situation by slowing down the evolution of resistance. Here, we evaluated sequential treatment protocols using two fully independent laboratory-controlled evolution experiments with the human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa PA14 and two pairs of clinically relevant antibiotics (doripenem/ciprofloxacin and cefsulodin/gentamicin). Our results consistently show that the sequential application of two antibiotics decelerates resistance evolution relative to monotherapy. Sequential treatment enhanced population extinction although we applied antibiotics at sublethal dosage. In both experiments, we identified an order effect of the antibiotics used in the sequential protocol, leading to signifi

SUBMITTER: Roemhild R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4662347 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature