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Antimicrobial resistance: Survival by reversible resistance

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Antibiotic therapy is a cornerstone of contemporary medicine. Resistance testing is the gold standard for selecting antibiotics, but in some cases they are surprisingly ineffective. A study now shows that pathogens can form a subset of cells which survive, and even continue to grow in the face of antibiotics.

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Figure 1: Clonal heteroresistance of E. cloacae in vitro (top) and during infection (bottom).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wolf-Dietrich Hardt is at the Institute of Microbiology and the Department of Biology of the Eidgenössissische Technische Hochschule ETH Zürich, Vladimir-Prelog Weg 4, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland.,

    Wolf-Dietrich Hardt

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  1. Wolf-Dietrich Hardt
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Correspondence to Wolf-Dietrich Hardt.

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Hardt, WD. Antimicrobial resistance: Survival by reversible resistance. Nat Microbiol 1, 16072 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmicrobiol.2016.72

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmicrobiol.2016.72

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