Antimicrobial Resistance: Then and Now

Abstract

Antibiotics have been regarded as one of the major discoveries of the 20th century. But the problem that came attached with is the rise of antibiotic resistance in hospitals and communities. The genetic makeup of microbes has benefitted from man's overuse of antibiotics to exploit every source of resistance genes and means of horizontal gene transmission to give rise to various mechanisms of resistance. Alexander Fleming upon accepting the 1945 Nobel Prize in Medicine said “It is not difficult to make microbes resistant to penicillin in the laboratory by exposing them to concentrations not sufficient to kill them. There is a danger that an ignorant man may easily under dose himself and by exposing his microbes to non lethal quantities of the drug and make them resistant”. This review presents the multifaceted aspects of antibiotic resistance development, history, superbug and superresiatance and resistance data observed over the past years with an overt conclusion showing undeniable methods to overcome the discussed problem, glaringly striking that it is time to act.