Intermittent antibiotic treatment of bacterial biofilms favors the rapid evolution of resistance

The rise of antibiotic resistance in bacterial pathogens is a major health concern and the determinants of this emergence are actively studied. By contrast, although biofilms are an important cause of infections due to their high tolerance to a broad range of antimicrobials, much less is known on the development of antibiotic resistance within the biofilm environment, an issue potentially aggravating the current antibiotic crisis. Here, we compared the occurrence of resistance mutations in pathogenic Escherichia coli planktonic and biofilm populations exposed to clinically relevant cycles of lethal treatments with the aminoglycoside antibiotic amikacin.