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An antibiotic is a type of antimicrobial substance active against bacteria. It is the most important type of antibacterial agent for fighting bacterial infections, and antibiotic medications are widely used in the treatment and prevention of such infections. They may either kill or inhibit the growth of bacteria. A limited number of antibiotics also possess antiprotozoal activity. Antibiotics are not effective against viruses such as the ones which cause the common cold or influenza; drugs which inhibit growth of viruses are termed antiviral drugs or antivirals rather than antibiotics. They are also not effective against fungi; drugs which inhibit growth of fungi are called antifungal drugs.
Drug resistance is the reduction in effectiveness of a medication such as an antimicrobial or an antineoplastic in treating a disease or condition. The term is used in the context of resistance that pathogens or cancers have "acquired", that is, resistance has evolved. Antimicrobial resistance and antineoplastic resistance challenge clinical care and drive research. When an organism is resistant to more than one drug, it is said to be multidrug-resistant.
Sir Richard Brook Sykes is a British microbiologist, the chair of the Royal Institution, the UK Stem Cell Foundation, and the trustees at King Edward VII's Hospital, and chancellor of Brunel University. As of June 2021, he is chair of the UK's Vaccine Taskforce, where he is responsible for overseeing the delivery of the COVID-19 vaccination programme, including preparations for booster programmes and encouraging vaccine innovation in the UK.
Multiple drug resistance (MDR), multidrug resistance or multiresistance is antimicrobial resistance shown by a species of microorganism to at least one antimicrobial drug in three or more antimicrobial categories. Antimicrobial categories are classifications of antimicrobial agents based on their mode of action and specific to target organisms. The MDR types most threatening to public health are MDR bacteria that resist multiple antibiotics; other types include MDR viruses, parasites.
Lincosamides are a class of antibiotics, which include lincomycin, clindamycin, and pirlimycin.
In microbiology, efflux is the moving of a variety of different compounds out of cells, such as antibiotics, heavy metals, organic pollutants, plant-produced compounds, quorum sensing signals, bacterial metabolites and neurotransmitters. All microorganisms, with a few exceptions, have highly conserved DNA sequences in their genome that encode efflux pumps. Efflux pumps actively move substances out of a microorganism, in a process known as active efflux, which is a vital part of xenobiotic metabolism. This active efflux mechanism is responsible for various types of resistance to bacterial pathogens within bacterial species - the most concerning being antibiotic resistance because microorganisms can have adapted efflux pumps to divert toxins out of the cytoplasm and into extracellular media.
Acinetobacter baumannii is a typically short, almost round, rod-shaped (coccobacillus) Gram-negative bacterium. It is named after the bacteriologist Paul Baumann. It can be an opportunistic pathogen in humans, affecting people with compromised immune systems, and is becoming increasingly important as a hospital-derived (nosocomial) infection. While other species of the genus Acinetobacter are often found in soil samples, it is almost exclusively isolated from hospital environments. Although occasionally it has been found in environmental soil and water samples, its natural habitat is still not known.
Cross-resistance is when something develops resistance to several substances that have a similar mechanism of action. For example, if a certain type of bacteria develops resistance to one antibiotic, that bacteria will also have resistance to several other antibiotics that target the same protein or use the same route to get into the bacterium. A real example of cross-resistance occurred for nalidixic acid and ciprofloxacin, which are both quinolone antibiotics. When bacteria developed resistance to ciprofloxacin, they also developed resistance to nalidixic acid because both drugs inhibit topoisomerase, a key enzyme in DNA replication. Due to cross-resistance, antimicrobial treatments like phage therapy can quickly lose their efficacy against bacteria. This makes cross-resistance an important consideration in designing evolutionary therapies.
The Marjory Stephenson Prize is the principal prize of the Microbiology Society, awarded for an outstanding contribution of current importance in microbiology.
Plasmid-mediated resistance is the transfer of antibiotic resistance genes which are carried on plasmids. Plasmids possess mechanisms that ensure their independent replication as well as those that regulate their replication number and guarantee stable inheritance during cell division. By the conjugation process, they can stimulate lateral transfer between bacteria from various genera and kingdoms. Numerous plasmids contain addiction-inducing systems that are typically based on toxin-antitoxin factors and capable of killing daughter cells that don't inherit the plasmid during cell division. Plasmids often carry multiple antibiotic resistance genes, contributing to the spread of multidrug-resistance (MDR). Antibiotic resistance mediated by MDR plasmids severely limits the treatment options for the infections caused by Gram-negative bacteria, especially family Enterobacteriaceae. The global spread of MDR plasmids has been enhanced by selective pressure from antimicrobial medications used in medical facilities and when raising animals for food.
Quinolone antibiotics constitute a large group of broad-spectrum bacteriocidals that share a bicyclic core structure related to the substance 4-quinolone. They are used in human and veterinary medicine to treat bacterial infections, as well as in animal husbandry, specifically poultry production.
Julian Edmund Davies is a British-born microbiologist and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of British Columbia.
Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the bacterium that causes the sexually transmitted infection gonorrhea, has developed antibiotic resistance to many antibiotics. The bacteria was first identified in 1879.
Stuart Blank Levy was a researcher and physician at Tufts University. He was among the first to advocate for greater awareness of antibiotic resistance and founded the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics.
Antibiotic Action is a UK-based initiative that works to raise global awareness about antibiotic resistance, and is funded by the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (BSAC), a UK registered charity. Antibiotic Action seeks to inform and educate people from various backgrounds, ranging from politicians to healthcare professionals to the public, about the need for discovery, research, and development of new treatments for bacterial infections to combat antibiotic resistance. It also aims to strengthen and enhance academic-industrial partnerships by bringing together communities that need antibiotics with academia, health-care professionals, and pharmaceutical companies to address the challenges facing antibiotic research, drug development, and Antimicrobial stewardship.
Multidrug resistance pumps also known Multidrug efflux pumps are a type of efflux pump and P-glycoprotein. MDR pumps in the cell membrane extrudes many foreign substances out of the cells and some pumps can have a broad specificity. MDR pumps exist in animals, fungi, and bacteria and likely evolved as a defense mechanism against harmful substances. There are seven families of MDRs and are grouped by homology, energy source, and overall structure.
Resistance-nodulation-division (RND) family transporters are a category of bacterial efflux pumps, especially identified in Gram-negative bacteria and located in the cytoplasmic membrane, that actively transport substrates. The RND superfamily includes seven families: the heavy metal efflux (HME), the hydrophobe/amphiphile efflux-1, the nodulation factor exporter family (NFE), the SecDF protein-secretion accessory protein family, the hydrophobe/amphiphile efflux-2 family, the eukaryotic sterol homeostasis family, and the hydrophobe/amphiphile efflux-3 family. These RND systems are involved in maintaining homeostasis of the cell, removal of toxic compounds, and export of virulence determinants. They have a broad substrate spectrum and can lead to the diminished activity of unrelated drug classes if over-expressed. The first reports of drug resistant bacterial infections were reported in the 1940s after the first mass production of antibiotics. Most of the RND superfamily transport systems are made of large polypeptide chains. RND proteins exist primarily in gram-negative bacteria but can also be found in gram-positive bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes.
Karen Bush is an American biochemist. She is a professor of Practice in Biology at Indiana University and the interim director of the Biotechnology program. Bush conducts research focusing on bacterial resistance mechanisms to beta-lactam antibiotics.
Multidrug-resistant bacteria are bacteria that are resistant to three or more classes of antimicrobial drugs. MDR bacteria have seen an increase in prevalence in recent years and pose serious risks to public health. MDR bacteria can be broken into 3 main categories: Gram-positive, Gram-negative, and other (acid-stain). These bacteria employ various adaptations to avoid or mitigate the damage done by antimicrobials. With increased access to modern medicine there has been a sharp increase in the amount of antibiotics consumed. Given the abundant use of antibiotics there has been a considerable increase in the evolution of antimicrobial resistance factors, now outpacing the development of new antibiotics.
References
- ↑ "Laura Piddock". GARDP. Retrieved 7 November 2021.
- 1 2 3 4 "Professor Laura Piddock". University of Birmingham. Retrieved 25 May 2021.
- ↑ Cressey, Daniel (2013). "The resistance against resistance". Nature. doi:10.1038/nature.2013.13086. S2CID 179507057 . Retrieved 25 May 2021.
- ↑ Redgrave, Liam S.; Sutton, Sam B.; Webber, Mark A.; Piddock, Laura J. V. (2014). "Fluoroquinolone resistance: mechanisms, impact on bacteria, and role in evolutionary success". Trends in Microbiology. 22 (8): 438–45. doi: 10.1016/j.tim.2014.04.007 .
- ↑ "Marjory Stephenson Prize Lecture Winners - 2014 Professor Laura Piddock". The Microbiology Society. Retrieved 25 May 2021.
- ↑ "Microbiology Outreach Prize". Microbiology Society. Retrieved 26 November 2022.
- ↑ "Garrod Lecture & Medal". British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. Retrieved 2 November 2021.
- ↑ Piddock, Laura J. V. (2019). "The 2019 Garrod Lecture: MDR efflux in Gram-negative bacteria—how understanding resistance led to a new tool for drug discovery". Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. 74 (11): 3128–3134. doi: 10.1093/jac/dkz370 . Retrieved 2 November 2021.
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