Antibiotics are an important pillar of modern medicine. If they lose their effectiveness, there are far-reaching consequences for humans and animals. For example, bacterial infections involving resistant microbes take longer to treat or may be untreatable in certain cases.
Resistance can cause higher costs in human and veterinary medicine as well as agriculture, and may make the disease more acute or even result in death. People or animals that have never had antibiotics in their life can also fall victim to an infection with resistant bacteria. The sharp increase we are seeing in antibiotic resistance worldwide is a very worrying phenomenon.
