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Abstract:The ability of bacteria to become resistant to previously successful antibiotic treatments is an urgent and increasing worldwide problem. Solutions can be sought via a number of methods including, for example, identifying novel antibiotics, re-engineering existing antibiotics or developing alternative treatment methods. The nonlinear interactions involved in infection and treatment render it difficult to predict the success of any of these methods without the use of computational tools in addition to more traditional experimental work.

We use mathematical modelling to aid in the development of anti-virulence treatments that, unlike conventional antibiotics that directly target a bacterium’s survival, may instead attenuate bacteria and prevent them from being able to cause infection. Using examples such as anti-adhesion treatments for P. aeruginosa infections, we use ordinary differential equation modelling to predict both the success of anti-virulence treatments and also their drawbacks, drawing on the mathematical analyses to predict how the latter can be overcome.