Tackling Antibiotic Resistance

摘要

It would be unfortunate if the benefits brought to mankind by the introduction of antibiotics and other antimicrobial agents in the last century were to prove merely transient, but that is exactly the prospect facing infectious disease specialists today. The reason: microbial pathogens are becoming resistant to the agents used to treat the diseases they cause, and the rate at which resistance is developing exceeds the rate at which the pharmaceutical industry is developing new antimicrobials. The situation is so serious that some experts are even predicting we could enter a new, post-antibiotic era in as little as ten years.