Burden of Antibiotic Resistance in Common Infectious Diseases: Role of Antibiotic Combination Therapy

Abstract

Globally, antimicrobial resistance is alarming concern especially in commonly reported disease entities like respiratory tract infection, enteric fever and infections associated with gram-negative bacilli (GNB). Rational use of antimicrobial drugs reported significant decrease in bacterial burden and may also reduce the risk of disease progression. However, at times in particular indication, certain patient and pathogen factor limits the selection and use of specific antibiotic therapy while in some case, due to presence of additional risk factor, aggressive therapy is required to achieve clinical reemission and prevent complications. Delay in start of suitable antibiotic therapy is another imperative factor for treatment failure and rise of drug resistance. With rapidly increasing antibiotic resistance and decline in new antibiotic drug development, the toughest challenge remains to maintain and preserve the efficacy of currently available antibiotics. Therefore, the best rational approach to fight these infections is to ‘hit early and hit hard’ and kills drug-susceptible bacteria before they become resistant. The preferred approach is to deploy two antibiotics that produce a stronger effect in combination than if either drug were used alone. Various society guidelines in particular indications also justify and recommend the use of combination of antimicrobial therapy. Combination therapies have distinct advantage over monotherapy in terms of broad coverage, synergistic effect and prevention of emergence of drug resistance.

Keywords

• antimicrobial resistance
• respiratory tract infection
• enteric fever
• gram-negative bacilli
• synergistic effect