Antimicrobial Adjuvants - A Novel Approach to Manage Antimicrobial Resistance

Antibiotic resistance is one of the most prevalent, complex and serious global health issues, and needs to be monitored and controlled with medicine. Many approaches have been used to reduce the emergence and impact of resistance to antibiotics. The antimicrobial adjuvant approach is considered as novel, more effective and less expensive. The said approach not only suppresses the emergence of resistance but also conserves the activity of existing antibiotics by offering a promising strategy that is also complementary to the discovery of new antibiotics. This review contains an outline of the basic types of antibiotic adjuvant, their structure, the basis of their operation, their substrate antibiotics and the challenges in this field, as well as the role of potential compounds, namely β-lactamase inhibitors, efflux pump inhibitors and permeability enhancers in antibiotic resistance and their possible solutions.