ARTICLE IN PRESS G Model JIPH-1743; No. of Pages 17 Journal of Infection and Public Health xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Infection and Public Health jou rn al hom epage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jiph Review Antibiotic resistance in microbes: History, mechanisms, therapeutic strategies and future prospects Tanvir Mahtab Uddin a,† , Arka Jyoti Chakraborty a,† , Ameer Khusro b , BM Redwan Matin Zidan a , Saikat Mitra a , Talha Bin Emran c,* , Kuldeep Dhama d , Md. Kamal Hossain Ripon e , Márió Gajdács f,* , Muhammad Umar Khayam Sahibzada g , Md. Jamal Hossain h , Niranjan Koirala i a Department of Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Dhaka, Dhaka 1000, Bangladesh b Research Department of Plant Biology and Biotechnology, Loyola College, Nungambakkam, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India c Department of Pharmacy, BGC Trust University Bangladesh, Chittagong 4381, Bangladesh d Division of Pathology, ICAR-Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Izatnagar, Bareilly 243122, Uttar Pradesh, India e Department of Pharmacy, Mawlana Bhashani Science and Technology University, Santosh, Tangail 1902, Bangladesh f Department of Oral Biology and Experimental Dental Research, Faculty of Dentistry, University of Szeged, 6720 Szeged, Hungary g Department of Pharmacy, Sarhad University of Science and Information Technology, Peshawar, Pakistan h Department of Pharmacy, State University of Bangladesh, 77 Satmasjid Road, Dhanmondi, Dhaka 1205, Bangladesh i Department of Natural Products Research, Dr. Koirala Research Institute for Biotechnology and Biodiversity, Kathmandu 44600, Nepal a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 23 August 2021 Received in revised form 4 October 2021 Accepted 14 October 2021 Keywords: Antibiotics Antimicrobial resistance Mode of action Multidrug resistant bacteria MDR Preventive strategies a b s t r a c t Antibiotics have been used to cure bacterial infections for more than 70 years, and these low-molecular- weight bioactive agents have also been used for a variety of other medicinal applications. In the battle against microbes, antibiotics have certainly been a blessing to human civilization by saving millions of lives. Globally, infections caused by multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria are on the rise. Antibiotics are being used to combat diversified bacterial infections. Synthetic biology techniques, in combination with molecular, functional genomic, and metagenomic studies of bacteria, plants, and even marine inverte- brates are aimed at unlocking the world’s natural products faster than previous methods of antibiotic discovery. There are currently only few viable remedies, potential preventive techniques, and a lim- ited number of antibiotics, thereby necessitating the discovery of innovative medicinal approaches and antimicrobial therapies. MDR is also facilitated by biofilms, which makes infection control more com- plex. In this review, we have spotlighted comprehensively various aspects of antibiotics viz. overview of antibiotics era, mode of actions of antibiotics, development and mechanisms of antibiotic resistance in bacteria, and future strategies to fight the emerging antimicrobial resistant threat. © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00 Antibiotics: past, present and future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00 Pre-antibiotic era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00 Early era of antibiotics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00 Golden era of antibiotics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00 Present situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00 Future approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00 * Corresponding authors. E-mail addresses: tmahtab615@gmail.com (T.M. Uddin), arkwcky@gmail.com (A.J. Chakraborty), armankhan0301@gmail.com (A. Khusro), zidan.redwan88@gmail.com (B.R.M. Zidan), saikatmitradu@gmail.com (S. Mitra), talhabmb@bgctub.ac.bd (T.B. Emran), kdhama@rediffmail.com (K. Dhama), md.kh.ripon@gmail.com (Md.K.H. Ripon), gajdacs.mario@stoma.szote.u-szeged.hu (M. Gajdács), umar.sahibzada@gmail.com (M.U.K. Sahibzada), jamal.du.p48@gmail.com (Md.J. Hossain), koirala.biochem@gmail.com (N. Koirala). † The authors contributed equally to this work. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jiph.2021.10.020 1876-0341/© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Please cite this article as: Uddin TM, et al, Antibiotic resistance in microbes: History, mechanisms, therapeutic strategies and future prospects, J Infect Public Health, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jiph.2021.10.020