Cross-resistance

[1] Due to cross-resistance, antimicrobial treatments like phage therapy can quickly lose their efficacy against bacteria.

[6] Or in the context of microbes, it is the resistance to multiple different antimicrobial agents as a result of a single molecular mechanism.

[7] Cross-resistance is highly involved in the widespread issue of antibiotic resistance; an area of clinical relevance.

[8] But resistance to antibiotics can arise in multiple ways, not necessarily being the result of exposure to an antimicrobial compound.

Exposure to certain disinfectants can lead to the increased expression of genes that encode for efflux pumps that are able to maintain low levels of antibiotics.

[12][13] Experimental work has shown that exposure to zinc can lead to increased levels of bacterial resistance to antibiotics.

The possible implication of this is that not only the presence of antibacterial compounds can lead to the development of resistance against antibiotics, but also environmental factors like exposure to heavy metals.

Such developments can be exploited by researchers in effort to combat the harms created by cross resistance to commonly used antibiotics.