Edited by Ana Budimir
ISBN: 978-953-56942-6-7
© 2018 by the authors; licensee IAPC, Zagreb, Croatia.
This book is an open-access book distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license.
DOI: 10.5599/obp.15.0

Fighting Antimicrobial Resistance

by Ana Budimir

When antimicrobials were widely introduced in the 1940s they were considered as “miracle drugs” because they could successfully treat a broad range of common infections as well as more difficult bacterial diseases.

Since then, this medical innovation has saved millions upon millions of human lives around the globe. Due to overuse or misuse of antimicrobials, some bacterial strains have developed resistance to different antimicrobial drugs, although the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a natural process, some degree is expected to develop against all antimicrobials, even when treatments are optimal. It occurs when microorganisms evolve to be able to resist the medicine that has been used to combat them. Resistant microorganisms can survive or even grow in the presence of a concentration of antimicrobial that is usually sufficient to inhibit or kill non-resistant microorganisms of the same species. Medical doctors and scientists are alarmed that if the trend continues, we may enter a “post-antibiotic era” when even minor infections can prove fatal.

Antibiotics are among the most commonly prescribed drugs used in human medicine, but up to 50 % of the time antibiotics are not prescribed properly ( often given when not needed or with incorrect dosing or duration). Treatment failure caused by AMR contributes to: additional side effects; longer hospital stays; psychological disorders due to reduced quality of life; burden on families; and a greater likelihood of death as a result of inadequate or delayed treatment. AMR also affects patients who are not infected with resistant organisms. Infections caused by resistant organisms currently claim at least 50 000 lives each year across Europe and the USA, and hundreds of thousands of deaths are being caused in other areas of the world. AMR may be the greatest challenge to face health care in the 21st century.

While the development of AMR has been accelerating, the development of new antimicrobial agents has slowed substantially in past decades. For example, the ageing of the USA population has shifted medicine discovery efforts towards agents for chronic medical conditions that are more prevalent among the elderly, such as hypercholesterolaemia, hypertension, mood disorders, dementia, arthritis and cancer. Factors that will largely determine the future extent of AMR are: pathogen and microbial ecology; prescribing and dispensing practices; population characteristics; and health care policy.

Activities implemented in many countries contribute to AMR containment through increased capacities for improved infection prevention and control, stronger AMR stewardship, and the establishment of regulatory systems, national action plans, standard treatment guidelines, essential medicines lists, and updated pre-service curricula. It is important to build capacity, detection systems, and laboratories to strengthen and improve medicine use, improve infection prevention and control practices, and detect and report priority AMR pathogens.

The emergence of AMR is a complex problem driven by many interconnected factors, in particular the overuse and misuse of antimicrobials.

The aim of this book is to provide some perspective on this very important subject and to provide cutting-edge knowledge and reviews of the activities and various aspects of antimicrobial resistance containment.

Chapter 1. Fighting antimicrobial resistance in ESKAPE pathogens Download
by Rocio Trastoy, Lucia Blasco, German Bou, Maria Tomas
DOI number: 10.5599/obp.15.9
Downloaded: 13
Chapter 2. The impressive adaptability of Acinetobacter baumannii: A paradigm of antimicrobial resistance Download
by Alejandro Beceiro
DOI number: 10.5599/obp.15.12
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Chapter 3. Antimicrobial resistance in Staphylococci Download
by Monika Pipová
DOI number: 10.5599/obp.15.4
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Chapter 4. Vancomycin resistant Enterococcus colonization: Is isolation the only precaution? Download
by Filiz Orak
DOI number: 10.5599/obp.15.5
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Chapter 5. Treatment review of hospital acquired infections Download
by Janay Bailey, George Udeani, Salim Surani
DOI number: 10.5599/obp.15.14
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Chapter 6. Novel drug delivery systems to combat antimicrobial resistance Download
by Pranothi Mulinti, Raquib Hasan, Amanda Brooks
DOI number: 10.5599/obp.15.1
Downloaded: 5
Chapter 7. Ceragenins as non-peptide mimics of endogenous antimicrobial peptides Download
by Marjan Hashemi, Brett Holden, Paul Savage
DOI number: 10.5599/obp.15.13
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Chapter 8. Small molecules targeting at the bacterial cell division protein FtsZ as potential antimicrobial agents Download
by Ning Sun, Kwok-Yin Wong
DOI number: 10.5599/obp.15.3
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Chapter 9. The only way to fill the gap: Combinations of repurposed drugs against antibiotic resistance and lethal sepsis Download
by David Brown
DOI number: 10.5599/obp.15.2
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Chapter 10. Antimicrobial compounds from plants Download
by Mariana Ferdes
DOI number: 10.5599/obp.15.15
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Chapter 11. Equibiotics: a new type of phyto-drug equilibrating local microbiota Download
by Xavier Lozoya, Maricela Gascón-Muro, Juan Agüero, Erika Rivera-Arce
DOI number: 10.5599/obp.15.8
Downloaded: 3
Chapter 12. Veterinary antimicrobial stewardship Download
by Hayley Eagar
DOI number: 10.5599/obp.15.7
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Chapter 13. Inhibition of bacterial stress responses - state of the art Download
by Thi Thu Hoai Nguyen, Trong Thuc Nguyen, Peter Lambert
DOI number: 10.5599/obp.15.16
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Chapter 14. Bacterial adhesion on polyelectrolyte multilayers Download
by Klemen Bohinc, Davor Kovačević
DOI number: 10.5599/obp.15.6
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Chapter 15. Immunomodulation by antibiotics Download
by Leonard Blum, Susanne Schiffmann, Michael Parnham
DOI number: 10.5599/obp.15.11
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Chapter 16. PK/PD for prediction and contain of antimicrobial resistance Download
by Abdul Sajid, Saeed Ahmed, Muhammad Abu Bakr Shabbir, Muhammad Kashif Maan, Ijaz Ahmed, Jun Li, Zonghui Yuan, Haihong Hao
DOI number: 10.5599/obp.15.10
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Water Balance Estimates of Evapotranspiration Rates in Areas with Varying Land Use by Elizabeth A. Hasenmueller and Robert E. Criss