Antimicrobial Resistance Flashcards
What is the link between antibiotic development and resistance development?
Most antibiotics exist for 5-15 years after development and clinical use before resistance occurs
The use of the antibiotic promote resistant to developme
What is meant by intrinsic resistance in terms of AMR?
When a species of microrganism is naturally resistant (or not susceptible) to an antibiotic or antibiotic class, without the need to acquire new genes or mutations.
What antibiotics are bacteroides intrinsically resistant to?
Aminoglycosides
Many Beta lactams
Quinolones
bacteriodes = gram negative anaerobes
What antibiotics are all gram negative and/all all gram positive organisms resistant to?
Gram negative - glycopeptides and lipopetides
Gram positive - aztreonam
Give some examples of specific gram positive microbes and what antibiotics they are intrinsically resistant to
Enterococci - aminoglycosides, cephlasporins, lincosamides
Listera monocytogenes - cephlasporins
Give some examples of specific gram negative microbes and what antibiotics that are intrinsically resistant to.
E.coli - macrolides
Klebsiella spp - ampicillin
Serratia marcescens - macrolides
Pseudomonas aeruginose - sulfonamides, amipicllin, 1st and 2nd gen cephlasporins, chloramphenicol, tetracylcine
Stentophomonas maltophilia - amingoglycosides, beta lactams, carbapenems, quinolones
Acinetobacter spp - ampicillin, glycopeptides
What is meant by acquired antibiotic resistance?
An evolutionary process by which bacteria acquire resistance to an antibiotic , by adopting properties or features or functions that they did not originally have.
What are the different methods by which cells can acquired antibiotic resistance?
Transfer of resistant genes
Mutation
Selection due to antibiotic pressure
Growth conditions - biofilms
What is meant by phenotypic resistance in terms of antibiotic resistance?
Resistance is achieved without genetic alteration.
Normally occurs due to environmental changes in specific growing conditions causing physiological changes.
This resistance tends to be transient (hence reversible) but is difficult to identify on susceptibility tests (when the environmental conditions are often different).
What are the three different methods of phenotypic resistance?
Persistence
Biofilm growth
Swarming
What is persistence as a method of phenotypic resistance?
When an a bacterial subpopulation is not killed by an antibiotic at normally lethal concentrations but the majority of the population are killed, tends to do this by transiently stopping growth.
When the antibiotic is removed this subpopulation repopulates the colony
Note population continues to behave as a susceptible organism, and will reproduce in susceptible and persistent organisms.
What is the key difference between bacterial persistence and resistance?
Persistence - growth stops to avoid death
Resistance - growth continues
Both appear in presence of antibiotics.
What is meant by biofilm growth as a method of phenotypic resistance?
Biofilm - bacteria surface-associated growth and become embedded in a matrix containing polysaccharides.
Bacteria in biofilm are less susceptible to antibiotics - ECM can alter antibiotic function by affecting diffusion and access to microbes
Regions of the biofilm will have different levels of oxygen and nutrients altering their metabolism - so some subpopulation less susceptible
What is swarming as a method on phenotypic antimicrobial resistance?
Swarming is the pattern of movement of bacterial cell population, many bacteria gather and growth together on top of a surface.
Can rapidly migrate together across a moist surface
Tend to be hyperflagellated cells in nutrient rich environments.
Resistance is transient and may be due to altered cell surface and permeability to drug.
What is meant by an intrinsic resistome in terms of antibiotic resistance?
A set of elements of characteristics that contributes directly or indirectly to how bacteria develop resistant to antibiotics and does not involve previous antibiotic exposure or gene transfer.
How can genetic influence the intrinsic resitome?
The metabolic genes that a cell posses alters the different phenotypes it can possess
This is further modified by regulators that alter which genes are expressed
Does not always require to acquisition of new genes (hence intrinsic)
What are the classical determinants of resistance on bacteria?
Antibiotic inactivation
Target modification
Changes in bacterial permeability (drug uptake)
Efflux pump
This can occur due to intrinsic or acquired resistance.
What are the methods of spreading acquired resistance to antibiotics?
Horizontal genes transfer
Mutation.
What is meant by the halo effect of bacteria in terms of antibiotic resistance?
When the presence of one antibiotic-resistant microbe in a population also provides benefit to other non resistant microbes in that colony indirectly be reducing antibiotic concentration.
May also cause people to negative under treat or perceive non resistant strains as a threat. Leading to ineffective care.
What environments contribute to an antibiotic resistant gene pool?
Antibiotics or antibiotic residues and bacteria are found in high concentrations in clinical settings, wastewater and soil (from use on plants).
This creates a highly concentrated environment where antibiotic use is a selective pressure, microbes in these environments rapidly develop resistance
Creates an antibiotic resistance gene pool, where genes are exchanged and spread quickly between different microbes.
What are the methods of horizontal gene transfer to acquire antibiotic resistance?
Conjugation - cell to cell contact mediated by pillia allows gene exhcnage between bacteria, often mediated by plasmid
Tranformation - bacteria takes up pieces of DNA floating in its environment often from other bacteria that has died and released content
Transduction - bacteriophages move resistance between the bacteria they infect.
How do selection pressures affect the development of antibiotic resistance?
Selecitive pressure - can cause epigentic changes in an organism, evolutionary change where adaptive changes persist in the population
Antibiotic use acts as a selective pressure, bacteria that epigenetic changes enable resistance survive whilst other rest die
Post antimicrobial growth is dominated by resistant bacteria.
What are some of the mechanisms of resistance to beta lactams?
- Limited uptake due to decreased number of porins or has no outer cell wall
- Gram pos alter PBPs so low affinity
- Gram pos and neg have beta lactamses that can inactivate drug
- Presence of END efflux pumps
What are some mechanisms of resistance against carbapenems?
Changed selectivity of porins alter drug uptake.
What are some mechanism of resistance against cephalosporins?
Changed selectivity of porins alter drug uptake
What are some mechanisms of resistance against glycopeptides?
- Thickened cell wall or no outer cell wall - alters drug uptake
- Modified target peptidoglycan
What are some mechanisms of resistance against lipopetides?
Modified net cell surface charge -alters drug target.
What are some mechanisms of resistance against aminoglycosides?
- Change cell wall polarity to alter uptake
- Ribosomal mutation or methylation to alter drug target
- Aminoglycoside modifying enzymes inactive drug by acetylation, phosphorylation or adenylation
- RND efflux pumps