how does not finishing a course of antibiotics cause antibiotic resistance?
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When the symptoms go away it doesn’t mean that all the bacteria are dead, just that they are suppressed and aren’t actively harming you because they are too busy with trying to survive. If you haven’t finish the course then chances are you haven’t killed them all. So the survivors will spend some generations in antibiotic-saturated environment. In this environment mutations which provide for antibiotic resistance will be highly beneficial, so the surviving bacteria might evolve this trait. Then your infection will come back with a vengeance.
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