A Patient Has Finished His Treatment for a Bacterial Infection

Multiple Choice

A patient has finished his treatment for a bacterial infection with an antibiotic and feels better. However, four days later the same bacterial infection returns. The doctor prescribes the same course of antibiotics, but this time these antibiotics do not cure the patient. What would be the most likely reason for this?

A) The patient was not treated in time and so the infection became too severe.
B) The non- resistant bacteria evolved within these four days so that the drug became ineffective.
C) The drug killed most of the bacteria in the population, but a few individuals with genetic resistance to the drug survived and passed the resistant gene on to their offspring.
D) The antibiotic was quickly metabolized by the patient and did not have time to work.