4.2 Activity against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria
Narrow-spectrum antibiotics are effective against either Gram-positive or Gram-negative bacteria, whereas broad-spectrum antibiotics are effective against both types.
Not all Gram-positive and/or Gram-negative bacteria are affected by a single antibiotic. Why is this?
Answer
This is because of the specificity of the antibiotic/bacterial target interaction, whether the bacterial species has the target in question and whether the bacteria are resistant to the antibiotic.
OpenLearn - Understanding antibiotic resistance
Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.