drugs
Tolerance and Resistance to Drugs
Prevention and Treatment
To prevent the development of resistance, doctors try to use antibiotics only when necessary (not for viral infections such as a cold) and have people take them for a full course of treatment. In the treatment of certain serious infections, such as HIV, doctors usually give two or more different drugs at the same time because it is very unlikely that a cell would spontaneously be resistant to two drugs at the same time. However, giving one drug for a short time followed by another can produce resistance to multiple drugs. Multi-drug resistance has become a problem with tuberculosis in particular. Once tolerance or resistance has developed to a drug, doctors may increase the dose or use a different drug. 