“Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest public health challenges of our time,” declares the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). And while antibiotic resistance and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) took a backseat to the COVID-19 pandemic, the problem hasn’t gone away.
Antibiotic resistance (AR) refers to bacteria resistant to antibiotics. Antimicrobial resistance is a broader term used to describe resistance to drugs among a variety of microbes, including bacteria, parasites, viruses, and fungi.