Figure 2.

Assessment of the three treatment protocols using different optimality criteria. While the criterion total number of uninfected patients within the first year (a) ranks the strategies as ‘combination therapy > mixing > cycling’, the criteria time until the number of patients infected with the double-resistant strain has reached 10% of all patients and total number of uninfected patients until this time (b) lead to the ranking ‘cycling > mixing > combination therapy’. Note also that, with cycling, the double-resistant strain never reaches a very high frequency. (See electronic supplementary material for parameter values and performance scores.)