EVOLUTION OF ANTIBIOTIC-RESISTANCE

World-wide spread of bacterial resistance to antimicrobial agents may limit the future progress of medicine. A huge environmental antibiotic pressure, resulting from industrial production and marketing of these drugs, has simultaneously contributed to the increase in the diversit y of resistant phenotypes, to the selection of the fittest among them, and to the dispersal of resistance genes, which is expected to result ina significant acceleration of the rate of microbial evolution. Curr ent research is focused on the mechanisms involved in the genesis, sel ection and dispersal to resistance genetic determinants; strategies ba sed on molecular epidemiology and mathematical models may contribute t o control or reverse the frightening trend towards a new pre-antibioti c era.