Antibiotic resistance, or “heteroresistance,” is more common than previously believed, according to a recent scientific article from researchers at the Emory Antibiotic Resistance Center, published on Monday, June 17, in Nature Microbiology.

Research has been conducted through the use of 104 bacterial isolates in order to track resistance, which showed that more than 85 percent of bacteria is heteroresistant to at least two antibiotics, according to the Emory News Center.

“Heteroresistance means that standard tests used in hospital labs would not always detect resistance to a given antibiotic, because only a small sub-population of the bacterial cells are resistant to the drug,” director of the Emory Antibiotic Resistance Center, Dr. David Weiss said in a recent press release. “But that sub-population quickly emerges and thrives, when that particular antibiotic is thrown at the bacterial infection.”

However, these researchers believe that tracking heteroresistance could pave the way for combinations of antibiotics that can protect people from the resistant bacteria.

In the research done up to this point, Emory researchers have found that bacteria which are resistant to two types of antibiotics can be combated by combining the two antibiotics, fighting off bacteria more effectively.

To read more of Emory’s published research on this issue, click here.

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