Mecanismos emergentes de resistencia a antibióticos en enterobacterias de origen humano, animal y ambiental
PhD Thesis defense by Cristina Martínez Ovejero at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of the Complutense University of Madrid
September 29th, 2017
The inclusion of antibiotics in clinical practice lead to a major revolution in medicine. Their use not only made infectious diseases curable, one of the main death causes of the 20th Century, but also enabled great advances in medicine and surgery. Ergo, antibiotics have helped achieve medical milestones which have substantially improved human quality of life, and increased life expectancy. Albeit, shortly after starting using them, it was observed how certain bacteria were surviving the antibiotics. At first it was thought that this antibacterial resistance was a natural consequence, linked to the use of antibiotics. However, due to the incorrect and indiscriminate use of antibiotics in human medicine, veterinary and agriculture, this natural phenomenon sped up in such way that the rate of resistance overcame that of the discovery of new antibiotic molecules. Consequently, the current worldwide situation is critical, as we are fighting pathogens which are able to resist the totality of available antibiotics, and threatens to put an end to the antibiotic era. In order to be able to stop the advance of antibiotic resistance, it is necessary to understand how it evolves and transmits, with the goal of predicting the emergence of of new resistance mechanisms. Resistances are not circumscribed to a certain niche, as they are able to discriminate, evolve and disseminate among different environments. It’s important to bear in mind that antibiotics are also used in veterinary medicine and agriculture, where their use is on the other hand more strictly regulated, and only those authorized can be used. It is fundamental, therefore, to study resistance mechanisms in order to understand their true ecology not only in human medicine, but in animals and environments...
