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Optimal Drug Synergy in Antimicrobial Treatments
Figure 2
Choice of drug interaction presents a tradeoff between treatment efficacy and prevention of multi-drug resistance.
Below a critical level of drug interaction (unshaded region, 
), treatment efficacy (
, blue) and prevention of multi-drug resistance (
, black) exhibit a tradeoff: increased synergy yields higher efficacy, but at the expense of lower resistance prevention. Above 
, however, efficacy plateaus: increasing synergy beyond this ‘synergy ceiling’ fails to improve treatment efficacy, but continues to diminish resistance prevention (shaded region, 
).
doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000796.g002