The Antimicrobial Therapy of the Future: Combating Resistances

The appearance of antibiotic resistance is an increasing problem in our society, where the adaptation of microorganisms to conventional therapies has been favored due to their incorrect use. This has driven the scientific community to develop new therapeutic alternatives hoping to obtain treatments that are more effective against increasingly resistant bacteria. The purpose of this study is to review the existent knowledge on the therapeutic alternatives that are being developed to treat cases of infection with antibiotic resistant bacteria. To do so, scientific publications were consulted on the MEDLINE database using different search terms. The bibliography consulted indicates that a great variety of therapeutic alternatives are currently being developed among which the most relevant are probiotics, synthetic peptides, bacteriophages and nanoparticles. Some of these measures, such as probiotics, are already being introduced in some hospitals with positive results. Others, such as synthetic peptides, bacteriophages or nanoparticles are still in the early stages of development and clinical trials. Moreover, there is a clear tendency to go back to the more classical medicine turning to plant extracts and essential oils whose active ingredients have been proven to have therapeutic activity. This shift towards less conventional therapies is marking the beginning of a post-antibacterial era in which antibiotics will most probably be replaced for probiotics, bacteriophages, synthetic peptides or even inorganic nanoparticles.