Competition and diversity determine vaccine impact on antibiotic resistance evolution
Bacterial vaccines can protect recipients from contracting potentially antibiotic-resistant infections. But by altering the selective balance between sensitive and resistant strains, vaccines may also help suppress—or spread—antibiotic resistance among unvaccinated individuals. Predicting the outcome requires knowing the drivers of resistance evolution. Using mathematical modelling, we identify competition and diversity as key mediators of resistance evolution. Specifically, we show that the frequency of penicillin resistance in Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus) across 27 European countries can be explained by between-host diversity in antibiotic use, heritable diversity in pneumococcal carriage duration, or within-host competition. We use our calibrated model to predict the impact of universal pneumococcal vaccination upon the prevalence of carriage, incidence of disease, and frequency of resistance for S. pneumoniae. The relative strength and directionality of competition between resistant and sensitive pneumococcal strains determines whether vaccination promotes, inhibits, or has little effect on the evolution of antibiotic resistance. Finally, we find that differences in overall bacterial transmission and carriage alter predictions, suggesting that evidence-based policies for managing resistance with vaccines must be tailored to both pathogen and setting.One sentence summaryCompetition and diversity are key to antibiotic resistance evolution and determine whether vaccines will prevent or increase resistant infections.