Evolution of resistance often involves a temporary loss of fitness

[Cheeky Monkey]

But serial passage of the resistant organism in the absence of antibiotic challenge will result in the rise of strains with compensatory mutations at different loci without the loss of the resistance allele. This evolution can restore the resistant bacteria to wild type levels of fitness and results in an overall increase in complexity because there are now new biochemical systems that work around the initial fitness cost plus the resistance allele.

For a good review of this see here
Compensatory Mutations, Antibiotic Resistance and the Population Genetics of Adaptive Evolution in Bacteria
Compensatory Mutations, Antibiotic Resistance and the Population Genetics of Adaptive Evolution in Bacteria
Bruce R. Levin, Véronique Perrot and Nina Walker
Genetics March 1, 2000 vol. 154 no. 3 985-997
Abstract

In the absence of the selecting drugs, chromosomal mutations for resistance to antibiotics and other chemotheraputic agents commonly engender a cost in the fitness of microorganisms. Recent in vivo and in vitro experimental studies of the adaptation to these “costs of resistance” in Escherichia coli, HIV, and Salmonella typhimurium found that evolution in the absence of these drugs commonly results in the ascent of mutations that ameliorate these costs, rather than higher-fitness, drug-sensitive revertants. To ascertain the conditions under which this compensatory evolution, rather than reversion, will occur, we did computer simulations, in vitro experiments, and DNA sequencing studies with low-fitness rpsL (streptomycin-resistant) mutants of E. coli with and without mutations that compensate for the fitness costs of these ribosomal protein mutations. The results of our investigation support the hypothesis that in these experiments, the ascent of intermediate-fitness compensatory mutants, rather than high-fitness revertants, can be attributed to higher rates of compensatory mutations relative to that of reversion and to the numerical bottlenecks associated with serial passage. We argue that these bottlenecks are intrinsic to the population dynamics of parasitic and commensal microbes and discuss the implications of these results to the problem of drug resistance and adaptive evolution in parasitic and commmensal microorganisms in general.

This research is often two decades old and it's inexcusable that creationists continue to make their "only ever loss in evolution" arguments given the clear experimental demonstration that they are wrong.

 

[Strathos]

They will just say it doesn't count because they're still bacteria.

 

[Cheeky Monkey]

They will just say it doesn't count because they're still bacteria.

True but it does give a lie to the "no beneficial mutations" or "they're too rare to have an effect" or "evolution is only loss of information"