Antibiotic resistance is a major problem that continues to expand as it threatens the lives of individuals throughout the world. Antibiotic medications are used to treat infections or diseases caused by bacteria. Antibiotics can save lives; however, the overuse or misuse of antibiotic drugs causes antibiotics to lose their effectiveness over time. Society needs to take action to slow the growing problem of antibiotic resistance by correctly taking antibiotics and by eliminating the excessive use of antibiotics.
All bacteria have the potential to develop a resistance to antibiotics. According to P. Collignon, “Increasing resistance is occurring in nearly all bacteria that infect people” (1109). The primary treatment for bacterial infections is antibiotic medication. Bacteria build up a resistance to antibiotics and then reproduce (Collignon 1109). The proliferation of these bacteria leads to infections that are difficult to treat. Everyone has the potential to develop a bacterial infection that is resistant to antibiotics. The presence of antibiotic resistance is prevalent all around the world (Collignon 1109). Some bacterial strains are resistant to only certain forms of antibiotic treatment, while other strains resist all antibiotics. These bacterial strains have evolved to no longer respond to antibiotics of any kind. Examples of bacterial diseases that are resistant to antibiotics include methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and beta-lactamase E. coli (ESBL E. coli) (Collignon 1109). Since these bacterial strains do not respond to antibiotic treatment, use of antibiotics is ineffective and might only exacerbate these infections.
Several factors have been identified that contribute to the development of resista...
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Society needs to be concerned about antibiotic resistance as it will impact future generations. The World Health Organization shares its concerns regarding antimicrobial resistance (AMR) by stating, “Without urgent, coordinated action, the world is heading towards a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries, which have been treatable for decades, can once again kill” (qtd. in Warren). Antibiotics are needed to effectively treat bacterial infections and diseases. With the use of antibiotics, patients are able to recover from various illnesses. If bacteria no longer respond to antibiotics, there will be no way to combat bacterial infections. Antibiotic resistance will create a world with many untreatable illnesses in the future if action is not taken to slow the progression of bacterial resistance to antibiotics.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are created when mutations in the pathogen's genetic code occurs, changing the protein in the bacteria that the antibiotics normally go after into a shape that the antibiotic can not recognize. The average bacteria divides every twenty minutes, so if a contaminated spot has one single bacteria in the morning, there could be trillions on that same spot at the end of the day. That means that when counting all the possibilities of mutations, the amount of mutated offspring that the bacteria might have formed during those replications could be as high as in the millions. Fortunately though, this does not happen so frequently that it is normally an issue. The amount of non-mutated bacteria vastly outnumbers the mutated ones and many of the mutations occurring in the bacteria usually have either a harmful effect, or not effect at all on its function. That means that the pathogen is still relatively less harmful than it c...
According to USA Today, U.S. doctors are prescribing enough antibiotics to give to 4 out of 5 Americans every year, an alarming pace that suggests they are being excruciatingly overused. In fact, Dr. Aunna Pourang from MD states, “to give you an idea of how high the pressure is to prescribe antibiotics, I didn’t get a job once because during the interview I told the lead physician that I only prescribe antibiotic prescriptions when they are warranted.” The development and widespread obsession of antibiotics, or drugs that kill bacteria and thereby reduce infection, has helped billions of people live longer, healthier lives. Unfortunately, the more we rely on and abuse antibiotics, the more bacteria develop resistance to them, which makes treating infections that much more challenging and leads to the growth of drug-resistant strains of bacteria. Research from the Center of Disease Control found that two million people in the United States become infected with antibiotic resistant bacteria, while 23,000 people die from such infections each year. Americans often aren’t informed on the power of the human body and rush to assumptions when perfection isn’t present. In a nutshell, the obsession of antibiotics is quite deadly and needs to be addressed before it’s too
This is the main reason antibiotic studies are disregarded. If the large majority of the population continues to do little to avert antibiotic resistance, bacteria will evolve beyond medical treatment. Actions must be taken by the community as a whole, and even further by the individual, to “reduce the spread of microbes and improve our defense against them” (Schmidt 272). Although antibiotic resistance is inevitable, humans are accelerating the natural defense of microbes through the overuse and misuse of antibiotics. The natural components of antibiotics have been used as local remedies long before humans understood the reasons why these sometimes-radical treatments worked.
Antibiotic resistance is one of the most important issues facing health care today, with wide reaching future implications if abuse continues. In the United States alone, antibiotic resistance is responsible for over two million illnesses and 23,000 deaths per year. Providers need to be judicious in the disbursement of these life saving pharmacological agents, while being informative of why antibiotics are not always the answer (Talkington, Cairns, Dolen, & Mothershed, 2014). In the case listed below, several issues need to be addressed including perception, knowledge deficit, and the caregiver’s role. This paper will focus on whether a prescription for antibiotics is appropriate and other courses of action that may be taken instead.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), describes antibiotic resistance is the ability of bacteria or other microbes to resist the effects of antibiotic treatment. () So instead of being destroyed by the medications, the bacteria survives and continues to reproduce, resultant in new communicable diseases that even more difficult to treat.
Long before humans discovered antibiotics, they existed in nature. So naturally, after penicillin was introduced, some germs were already naturally resistant to the drug. As we used more and more of the antibiotics, we incidentally caused drug-resistant germs to progress. So, even if you’ve never misused antibiotics, you could still become infected by bacterium most drugs won’t kill. For each drug, there are germs genetically programmed to survive- some w/ outer walls tough for antibiotic to cross, others with ways to dump the drugs back out before they can work, and yet others can inactivate the antibiotic. Even worse, by passing tiny packets of genetic material to other bacteria, these survivor germs sometimes also pass the formula for resistance to the other bacteria. The best way you can protect yourself and your family against drug-resistant bacteria is by using antibiotics correctly. Taking them when they’re not needed encourages the takeover of drug-resistant strains in your body. (Redbook, pg.95) That’s because when antibiotics are given, the normal bacteria in your body are killed off, leaving lots of bacterial “parking spaces'; open. And the germ left to fill them is the drug-resistant ones. (Redbook, pg.95) So far, antibiotic resistance has not been a big problem with streptococcus A, the germ familiar to all of us for causing millions of cases of strep thr...
“The World Health Organization projects that as drug effectiveness decreases and antibiotic resistance increases, public education becomes more and more crucial” (476) Antibiotics were discovered in 1940 and since have been abused and misused. Between bad practices and lack of proper education antibiotic resistance has been allowed to occur. The only way to combat bacterial infections is with strong patient education and following the correct schedule in taking antibiotics.
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.
. Many doctors and patients are unaware that antibiotics are designed to treat bacterial infections, not viral infections (Antibiotic resistance, N.D.). Many bacteria within our bodies are not harmful at all, and some of them actually provide health benefits. The bacteria that are harmful are disease-causing bacteria, which generate sicknesses such as strep throat, the common cold, and ear infections (Get, 2013). Viruses are smaller than bacteria and require hosts, such as plants or animals, in order to proliferate (What, N.D.). Doctors play a vital role in administering antibiotics, for patients rely on their knowledge and expertise in order to receive proper medication for ailments throughout their lives. According to www.acponline.org, 190 million doses of antibiotics are administered every day. Among patients that do not reside in hospitals, doctors prescribe more than 133 million antibiotic programs every year. Of those 133 million programs, it is estimated that over 50 percent of them are unnecessarily prescribed because the doctor is prescribing them for viral infections such as common colds or simple coughs (Antibiotic resistance, N.D.). However, doctors are not the only ones to blame in regard to misuse of antibiotics because their patients are just as guilty when it comes to ignorance in respect to antibiotic usage. Many preventable factors have emerged because of irresponsibility of patients, including self-medication practices and the temptations of cheap, counterfeit drugs, all of which have aggravated drug resistance in the last 20 years (What, N.D.). Also, many patients are unaware of the dangers that can result from leaving medication behind because they don’t use it. It is extremely ill-advised to leave behind eve...
Bacterial resistance to antibiotics has presented many problems in our society, including an increased chance of fatality due to infections that could have otherwise been treated with success. Antibiotics are used to treat bacterial infections, but overexposure to these drugs give the bacteria more opportunities to mutate, forming resistant strains. Through natural selection, those few mutated bacteria are able to survive treatments of antibiotics and then pass on their genes to other bacterial cells through lateral gene transfer (Zhaxybayeva, 2011). Once resistance builds in one patient, it is possible for the strain to be transmitted to others through improper hygiene and failure to isolate patients in hospitals.
This turn of events presents us with an alarming problem. Strains of bacteria that are resistant to all prescribed antibiotics are beginning to appear. As a result, diseases such as tuberculosis and penicillin-resistant gonorrhea are reemerging on a worldwide scale (1). Resistance first appears in a population of bacteria through conditions that favor its selection. When an antibiotic attacks a group of bacteria, cells that are highly susceptible to the medicine will die.
Thesis: With the advent of antibiotics in 1929 Fleming said, "The time may come when penicillin can be bought by anyone in the shops.Then there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant."With the overuse of antibiotics today we have seen this very idea come to be.Over usage is caused most prevalently by a lack of education on the part of the patient.Thus stated, the way to overcome such a circumstance is to educate, not only the patient but also the physician.
There are many medical professionals who believe that the rise of antibiotic resistance is a result of the overuse and misuse of antibiotics. Dr. Jim Wilde, a paediatric emergency medicine physician at the Medical College of Georgia believes that the medical profession is losing the war against resistance...
discusses how infection control interventions can be examined as they pertain to antibiotic-resistant bacteria. He states that there are only a few studies focusing on how antimicrobial resistant strategies could potentially affect the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which is not enough to create a protocol that all healthcare facilities across the country should follow. He created his own study focusing on the strains of multidrug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa, bacteria that cause bloodstream and/or pulmonary infection that can be life-threatening (p. 382). Buford et al. compares the differences between conventional techniques and molecular techniques in diagnosing multidrug-resistant infections. His study proved that when the strain of bacteria was correctly identified, the patient was isolated, standard precautions used, and the use of an effective antibiotic all helped to decrease the resistance rates in facilities (p.
The most effective way to combat pathogenic bacteria which invade the body is the use of antibiotics. Overexposure to antibiotics can easily lead to resistant strains of bacteria. Resistance is dangerous because bacteria can easily spread from person to person. Simple methods for preventing excessive bacterial spread are often overlooked. Not all preventative measures are even adequate. Doctors and patients often use antibiotics unnecessarily or incorrectly, leading to greater resistance. Antibiotics are used heavily in livestock and this excessive antibiotic use can create resistant bacteria and transfer them to humans. In order to reduce resistant bacteria,