Antibiotic resistance may be even more likely for patients infected with mixed strain pathogens, according to a report published July 12 in Nature.
Researchers screened patients for mixed strain pathogen infections as part of a clinical trial and found that "at least 1/3 of patients are colonized by multiple Pseudomonas strains, and that resistance evolves rapidly in these patients due to selection for pre-existing resistant strains."
They suggest additional investigation to fully understand this link but suggest that taking measurements on the diversity of a pathogen population could allow experts to "more accurately predict the likelihood of treatment failure at the level of individual patients," the study authors wrote.