how does not finishing a course of antibiotics cause antibiotic resistance?
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In a large population of bacteria, some are a bit more resistant to antibiotics than the rest. You can still kill them with a lot of antibiotics for a long time, but they survive small amounts unusually well.
If you stop a course of antibiotics early and your infection comes back, the new population of invading bacteria started from the most antibiotic resistant individuals that were in the last infection. That means the new population has a leg up on developing complete immunity to the antibiotic you used.
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