Resistència i virulència

Authors

  • Sara M. Soto

Abstract

Currently, a high number of infections treatments remain non-effective. One of the reasons is infectious agent being resistant to antimicrobial agents used. Besides this, the hosts immunological system may be unable to clear the bacteria, due to the presence of different virulence factors that may protect the bacteria from host defences, and may allow bacteria to colonize, invade or damage tissues. In this chapter we explain different examples showing that acquisition of antimicrobial resistance may be related with the virulence capacity of a microorganism, either because adquisition of resistance results in an increase or decrease of virulence, or because both properties might be transferred together by a mobile genetic element between microorganisms of the same of different species.

Published

2006-02-01

Issue

Section

Antimicrobians: generalitats