Alternative strategies for fighting multidrug resistant bacterial infections

Abstract

The unprecedented successes in antibiotic therapy led the scientists to consider that the war against infectious diseases has finished, but the emergence of resistant pathogenic bacteria has stopped this enthusiasm. Nowadays, the effectiveness of antibiotic therapy is continuously decreasing, due to the emergence and spread of antibiotic resistance among many important clinical pathogens, raising an acute need to find new, more effective antibiotics or other promising alternatives, to effectively treat the frequently occurring life-threatening infections. However, we are confronting an “innovation gap” in the development of novel antibiotics. The absence of measures and solutions to prevent the emergence of resistance and to combat pathogens will be felt both in the case of infectious diseases, whose treatments are based on antibiotics and in current routine medical practices, such as invasive diagnostic techniques, transplants, implantation of prosthetic devices. These side effects are difficult to quantify but threaten to cancel important progress in medical practice. Because of this, there is a great need for implementing national/worldwide policies for the rational use of antibiotics and also, to reinvigorate anti-infective strategies that involve the development or use of alternative methods including anti-infective compounds that act through new mechanisms of action. This minireview is presenting some of the currently proposed alternative strategies that could be used instead of antibiotics to prevent or treat bacterial infections produced by resistant strains.