Add a comment + Open annotations. The current annotation count on this page is being calculated. Scientists have proposed a modelling framework which could predict how antibiotic resistance will evolve in response to different treatment combinations, according to a study published in eLife. Microscopy image of Enterococcus faecalis. Image credit: Janice Haney Carr, USCDCP (CC0) The research could help doctors optimise the choice, timing, dose and sequence of antibiotics used to treat common infections, helping to halt the growing threat of antibiotic resistance to modern medicine. “Drug combinations are a particularly promising approach for slowing resistance, but the evolutionary impacts of combination therapy remain difficult to predict, especially in a clinical setting,” explains first author Erida Gjini, Researcher at the Department of Mathematics, Instituto Superior Tecnico, University of Lisbon, Portugal. “Interactions between antibiotics can accelerate, reduce or even reverse the evolution of resistance, and resistance to one drug might also influence resistance to another. These interactions involve genes, competing evolutionary pathways and external stressors, making it a complex scenario to pick apart.”