title: The importance of lag time extension in determining bacterial resistance to antibiotics.
abstract: It is widely appreciated that widespread antibiotic resistance has significantly reduced the utility of today's antibiotics. Many antibiotics now fail to cure infectious diseases, although they are classified as effective bactericidal agents based on antibiotic susceptibility tests. Here, via kinetic growth assays, we evaluated the effects of 12 commonly used antibiotics on the lag phase of a range of pure environmental isolates and of sludge bacterial communities with a high diversity. We show that an extended lag phase offers bacteria survival advantages and promotes regrowth upon the removal of antibiotics. By utilizing both lag phase extension and IC50, the killing efficiency of an antibiotic on a strain or a community can be easily revealed. Interestingly, for several strains of relevance to endemic nosocomial infections (e.g. Acinetobacter sp. and Pseudomonas aeruginosa) and the diverse sludge communities, tetracycline and quinolone antibiotics are most likely to be resisted via extended lag phase. This discovery is significant from a clinical point view since underestimation of bacteria resistance can lead to the recurrence of diseases.
authors.affiliation: Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control State-key Joint Laboratory, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. qiuyong@tsinghua.edu.cn and Division of Biomedical Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8LT, UK. huabing.yin@glasgow.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Bing
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control State-key Joint Laboratory, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. qiuyong@tsinghua.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Yong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Qiu
authors.affiliation: Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control State-key Joint Laboratory, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. qiuyong@tsinghua.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Hanchang
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.affiliation: Division of Biomedical Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8LT, UK. huabing.yin@glasgow.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Huabing
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yin
mesh_terms: D000150:Acinetobacter / Q000187:drug effects; D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents / Q000494:pharmacology*; D001431:Bacteriological Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D024881:Drug Resistance, Bacterial; D008826:Microbial Sensitivity Tests; D011550:Pseudomonas aeruginosa / Q000187:drug effects; D012722:Sewage / Q000382:microbiology; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents; D012722:Sewage