How to prevent resistance to antibiotics

Antibiotics are substances produced by microbes that can kill or stop the growth of bacteria, fungi and other microbes that cause disease and so restore an individual's health. During an infection, the fight that rages is between the body' s defenses and disease-producing microbes. Sometimes microbes can get an advantage in the battle. They multiply in large numbers and cause damage to tissues that results in disease.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Antibiotics cannot tell the difference between normal, harmless microbes and disease-producing microbes. We live in a world filled with microbes, and many of them are found on and inside our bodies, such as on the skin or in the throat or intestine. These normal bacteria are a benefit to us because they compete with and control the growth of disease-causing microbes. Broad-spectrum antibiotics can destroy many of these beneficial bacteria along with disease-causing microbes. The microbes that survive can then multiply in a large numbers, causing a superinfection. These microbes may be drug-resistant forms of the original bacteria causing the infection. Or they may be microbes that are normally present but only in small numbers. Often the microbes producing the superinfection prove to be harder to control than those of the original bacterial infection.
2. Another major problem that has resulted from the increased use of antibiotics is the appearance and spread of altered microbes that are resistant to various drugs. Increased use of antibiotics for infection they cannot cure, for example, they are used to treat such viral infections as the common cold or sore throat that are not affected by antibiotics. This type of overuse produces microbes that are not easily killed by antibiotics, and many develop their own defenses to counteract or resist to antibiotics. The resistance to antibiotics often means that more of the drug has to be used or, worse, that the original drug may no longer work and new drugs has to be found. A few microbes that can cause serious infections are now resistant to most of the known antibiotics.
3. Methods focuses on preventing the unnecessary use of antibiotics include monitoring milk and food supplies for antibiotics and educating public on the dangers of overuse drugs for mild infections. Providing information to the public on how to use antibiotics is another method. If antibiotics treatment is stopped before the prescribed date, the most resistant bacteria might survive and spread.
4. The continued use of antibiotics has allowed microbes to change, adapt, and become harder to destroy. By chance, a bacteria can change its genes and become better able to survive a drug's effect. These resistant bacteria can also share this new resistance trait with their neighboring bacteria. Soon large numbers of bacteria are resistant to the antibiotics. Some bacteria can even transfer genes that make them resistant to several antibiotics at once, creating so-called supergerms that are difficult to stop.
5. New therapies, such as using a combination of drugs, have been found to be effective. It is harder for bacteria to escape the killing action of two drugs at once, and because less of each drug can be used, the likelihood of side effects is reduced. There is also a reduced chance of producing a resistant form of the bacteria.