The highly dynamic nature of bacterial heteroresistance impairs its clinical detection.

ABSTRACT: Many bacterial species and antibiotic classes exhibit heteroresistance, a phenomenon in which a susceptible bacterial isolate harbors a resistant subpopulation that can grow in the presence of an antibiotic and cause treatment failure. The resistant phenotype is often unstable and without antibiotic selection it reverts back to susceptibility. Here we studied the dynamics by which these resistant subpopulations are enriched in the presence of antibiotic and recede back to their baseline frequency in the absence of selection. An increasing understanding of this instability will allow more effective diagnostics and treatment of infections caused by heteroresistant bacteria. We show for clinical isolates of Escherichia coli and Salmonella enterica that different antibiotics at levels below th

SUBMITTER: Pereira C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8099907 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature