Antimicrobial resistance

Efforts to reduce the use of existing drugs and incentives to invest in research could help combat resistance to antimicrobial drugs.

A lack of financial incentive has meant large pharmaceutical companies have left the market

Public-health experts hope that by reducing the spread of disease, society can cut back on its use of antibiotics.

New antibiotics are needed to tackle drug-resistant bacteria. Scientists are searching for candidates and revitalizing existing drugs.

James K. Martin argues that, to find new antibiotics, researchers need to leave the old molecules behind and take different approaches.

A microscopic molecular drill, a machine-learning system for drug discovery and other highlights from clinical trials and laboratory studies.

Worries about antimicrobial resistance and disease outbreaks have pushed farms to decrease drug use and improve hygiene.

Nature talks to aquaculture scientist Chadag Vishnumurthy Mohan about the use of antibiotics in fish farming.

David Wallinga says that US policymakers should follow Europe’s example to reduce the misuse of antibiotics in the agriculture sector.

In this Review, Rotello and colleagues discuss the mechanisms by which nanomaterials can be used to target antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, highlight design elements and properties of nanomaterials that can be engineered to enhance potency, and explore recent progress and remaining challenges for clinical implementation of nanomaterials as antimicrobial therapeutics.

Spread of antimicrobial-resistant (AR) bacteria is a global concern, but contributing factors remain unclear. Here, authors analyze distribution of AR bacteria in households from three ethnic groups in Tanzania and find that livelihood factors are more strongly associated with AR prevalence than antibiotic use.

In this Review, the authors describe the evidence for abnormalities in energy metabolism and mitochondrial function in migraine, consider the potential mechanisms and highlight treatments that affect metabolism. They conclude that migraine is a conserved adaptive response that helps to restore brain energy homeostasis.

CRISPR technology is emerging as a potential antimicrobial against antimicrobial-resistant bacteria. Here the authors develop a bacteriophage delivered Cas13a system for killing target bacteria and detecting bacterial genes.

This Review discusses chemotype-specific mechanisms of drug resistance and chemical strategies to overcome resistance.

During target protection, a resistance protein physically associates with an antibiotic target to rescue the latter from antibiotic-mediated inhibition. In this Review, O’Neill and colleagues describe the different molecular mechanisms underlying target protection and emphasize the importance of this phenomenon as a cause of clinically significant antibiotic resistance.

Urban informal settlements, more commonly known as slums, are hotspots for the environmental transmission of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Here, the authors discuss the behavioural, environmental and structural reasons for this and propose that improvements in water and waste infrastructure, as well as legal and economic incentives, could limit environmental AMR dissemination.