Antimicrobial Resistance: An Overview

Recounting the struggle against infectious diseases reconciles us with the failures. Following discovery, clinical implementation of different classes of antibiotics resulted in the enhancement in the occurrence of resistance among bacteria that plagued public health for a longer time. The relentless threat posed by microbial drug resistance has achieved new dimensions of pandemic scale as it has compromised the therapeutic potential of available drugs. Associated with the excessive and imprudent use of different classes of antibiotics, the opportunistic organisms come up with new strategies and mechanisms that not only thwart the treatment of diseases with available drugs but also worsen the situation by making infections impossible to treat in clinical settings. Representing a problem of global magnitude, it is imperative to design strategies for their detection, take steps to implement the appropriate use of antibiotics, monitor their impact on resistance development as part of the evaluation, and develop combative strategies to restrict the emergence and transmission of microbial-based infections among humans. This chapter delves into the widespread use of antibiotics and the emergence of resistance across various antibiotic classes. It explores the mechanistic aspects of resistance development in ESKAPE pathogens, providing a summary of factors contributing to this phenomenon and emphasizing the grave implications for human health.