: Could microbes develop resistance against Povidone Iodine solution? why or why not?
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Seeing your follow up questions, let’s agree that different “microbe killers” work in different ways AND that small changes (mutations) in a microbe are easier to “pop up” than large changes.
In the case of something like antibiotic medicines those usually work by causing a very specific problem, for example by stopping a microbe from absorbing a single, specific nutrient. It’s not impossible for 1 out of billions and billions of the microbe to mutate and not require that specific nutrient, or develop a way to sort of back-door the process. That’s how antibiotic resistance works. Antibiotics are very specific weapons with a very specific means of attack. Evolve (mutate) a defense on that specific attack and the antibiotic is garbage.
But in case of things like hand sanitizer, rubbing alcohol, or iodine, we’re taking about things that work via structural attack on existence of the microbe as a whole. It’s less a specific strategic weapon and more just wholesale dipping the microbe in acid, melting it away. It’s much less likely a microbe would just randomly mutate and create an entirely novel outer skin and protein structure, ready to go, day 1. That would require thousands of individual mutations all to coincide in just the right way at the right moment.
Is it impossible? No. Is it exceedingly unlikely? Defintely.
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