Failure and Success in Single-Drug Control of Antimicrobial Resistance

Abstract

We propose a mathematical model of Antimicrobial Resistance in the host to predict the failure of two antagonists of bacterial growth: the immune response and a single-antibiotic therapy. After characterising the initial bacterial load that cannot be cleared by the immune system alone, we define the success set of initial conditions for which an infection-free equilibrium can be reached by a viable single-antibiotic therapy, and we provide a rigorously defined inner approximation of the set. Finally, we propose an optimal control approach to design and compare successful single-drug therapies.

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