Overview of antimicrobial resistance and mechanisms: The relative status of the past and current

Abstract

Antibiotic development is not new to the medical community, but the emergence of antibiotic resistance has become the most serious threat to global health and food security. It results in longer hospital stays, more expensive medical treatments, and greater mortality rates around the world. The basic categories used to describe antibiotic resistance originating from both natural and genetically driven processes are natural, acquired, cross-resistance, multidrug, and pan-drug resistance. Bacterial intrinsic resistance is characterized by continued improvement of resistance mechanisms via cell wall structure and other cellular features. Resistant drug uptake, target site change, efflux pump mechanism, and target site mutation are examples of resistance mechanisms. The presence of resistant bacteria and antibiotic residues in the environment requires urgent global action to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Discovering new antibiotics is not the only prerequisite for dealing with this scenario; continuous national surveillance of antibiotic resistance gene level dissemination is also necessary. This review provides the most up-to-date status of the mechanisms of AMR against several antibiotics on the market and how the resistant bacteria have evolved with diverse mechanisms for their survival. It also discusses the significant clinical consequences and the impact of resistant bacteria exposure on public health. Further, it puts together a global understanding of the prevalence of resistant genes and offers recommendations to stop the further spread with some guidelines.