Responding to the emergence of antifungal drug resistance: perspectives from the bench and the bedside

The incidence of serious fungal infections is increasing rapidly, and yet the rate of new drugs becoming available to treat them is slow. The limited therapeutic armamentarium is a challenge for clinicians, because the available drugs are often toxic, expensive, difficult to administer, ineffective or a combination of all four. Given this setting, the emergence of resistance is especially concerning, and a review of the topic is timely. Here we discuss antifungal drug resistance in Candida spp. and Aspergillus spp. with reference to the most commonly used first-line antifungal agents – azoles and echinocandins. We review the resistance mechanisms of the leading pathogens, how resistance can be identified in the diagnostic lab and the clinical implications of resistance once detected.