Biorhythms and Bacterial Resistance: A Hidden Link?

Antibiotic resistance remains one of the most urgent challenges in modern preventive medicine. In parallel, growing evidence demonstrates that host circadian rhythms exert profound control over immune function, metabolism, and host–microbe interactions. This commentary explores emerging mechanistic and translational evidence suggesting that disruption of biological rhythms may influence bacterial physiological states, antibiotic tolerance, and persistence, thereby indirectly shaping clinical responses to antimicrobial therapy. Although direct clinical proof linking circadian disruption to genetic antibiotic resistance is limited, converging data from chronobiology, microbiology, and immunology support a biologically plausible framework in which temporal host–microbe interactions play a critical role in infection outcomes and therapeutic success.