The Ever Changing Face of Antibiotic Resistance: Prevailing Problems and Preventive Measures.

BACKGROUND: Antibiotic resistance is a global problem that presents significant risk to human health. Driven by selective pressure of antimicrobial agents, spontaneous mutation, recombination and horizontal gene transfer events, inappropriate antibiotic prescribing and use outside healthcare settings has increased their impact on healthcare system. Increasing risk for human health lead us to study resistance development mechanisms, associated factors that increase dissemination of resistance genes along with information of imperative measures necessary to curtail the growing menace.

METHODS: In this article, we emphasized on the state of knowledge regarding imprudent use of antibiotics that act as promoters of resistance development. For this, literature based search for articles and entries related to antimicrobial resistance was done. With ample of data available, selected was performed for the epidemiological and clinical based study to curtail the facts present in these data sets so as to get accurate and important information.

RESULTS: Resistance mediated by different determinants such as TEM, SHV, OXA and CTX-M, methods of mobilization that increase spread across species and as such failure to available treatment regimens was studied. Addition to detection methods, information of the inhibitors and natural substance useful in mitigating the effect of multidrug resistance was included to strategies the policies and plans for restricting their spread.

CONCLUSION: As intervention to this growing problem, modified use of antimicrobial agents, employment of different formulations of herbs along with public health interventions in restricting antibiotic use, are believed to be of great help in restricting their dissemination and as such spread to non-pathogenic bacterial isolates.