Antibiotic Resistance To Antibiotics

, prevention and control in our hospitals, have left South Africa, like the rest of the international community, on the brink of a return to an era of stubbornly resistant pathogenic bacteria towards antibiotics.

Diseases can be defeated or endured, if they are embraced. Denied or feared, they can grow and make it drudgery for scientists to manage. For years, South African mortality rates have escalated due to the phenomenon of antibiotic resistance.

Antibiotic resistance is a consequence of the misuse of antibiotics that give pathogenic bacteria the ability to withstand the effects of an antibiotic. Resistance occurs when bacteria change in such a way that they survive exposure to antibiotics. Resistance may not be confined to a single antibiotic, but may affect multiple antimicrobial classes. Antibiotic resistance is a major problem and everyone needs to work together to combat it - from medical practitioners to patients.

To get a clear insight of how pathogenic bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, one has to understand first how antibiotics work. Antibiotics are manufactured to interact with a specific target molecule produced by the bacteria. The target molecule performs protoplasm in the bacterium that is the driving cause of cellular growth and survival of the pathogen. Antibiotics hinder the growth and survival of the bacteria so that the bacteria can die. To inhibit the target’s function, an antibiotic must do three things. First, it has to reach the site of the target molecule. Second, the antibiotic has to persist at the site to have its effect. Third, the antibiotic needs to prevent the proper formation of cell walls and stop metabolic processes performed by the bacteria to prevent protein synthesis.

Antibioti...

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...up poll, it was estimated that more than half of American adults taking antibiotics failed to complete their prescribed dosage.

Compounding all of these solutions, the pharmaceutical industry needs to conduct extensive research on developing new antibiotics for various pathogenic bacteria by studying the bacterial structure. This will help scientists to formulate ways of counteracting the functions of the various constituents of bacteria.

The exacerbating effects and devastation caused by bacteria such as Mycobacterium,Vibrio cholerae, Bacillus anthracis, Xylophilus ampelinus, etc, is the growing threat of drug-resistance in many parts of the world. Identifying and addressing barriers to effective and timely diagnosis and treatment of drug-resistant diseases will be critical to preventing further emergence of strains of the disease with broad-spectrum resistance.