Experimentally Induced Resistance to Nalidixic Acid in Bacillus subtillis does not Result in Resistance to other Antibiotics
Introduction:
In the environment, bacteria frequently encounter various antibiotics and through various mechanisms, evolve to become resistant to these antibiotics. Some of these mechanisms sometimes involve beneficial mutations in a bacterium that allow it survive antibiotics but more frequently involve a transfer of genes from other bacteria, even bacteria of different species. Through the transfer of genes from other bacteria, a bacterium can acquire resistance against several antibiotics (Levy 2002).
Nalidixic acid is commonly used to treat urinary tract infections (Nalidixic Acid (Systematic) 1999), and is thus found in concentrated amounts in urine. When a person urinates, any excess nalidixic acid can easily find its way to soil, where Bacillus subtilis is found naturally. As the nalidixic acid would be diluted to sub-therapeutic concentrations, all the nalidixic acid would do is to select for resistant strains of any bacteria (e.g. B. subtilis) encountered (Levy 2002). As bacteria can pass along resistance factors to other currently un-resistant bacteria, the harmless B. subtilis which harbors resistance factors against nalidixic acid can potentially pass the resistance factors to harmful bacteria. Bacteria, however, frequently develop resistance not only to one antibiotic but to several and can pass on resistance factors for all these antibiotics to other bacteria. This study will attempt to produce B. subtilis that is resistant to nalidixic acid and determine if these nalidixic acid-resistant B. subtillis are also resistant to other antibiotics, especially those in the same class.
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...important not to lose its effectiveness to antibiotic resistance.
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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
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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.
In the last decade, the number of prescriptions for antibiotics has increases. Even though, antibiotics are helpful, an excess amount of antibiotics can be dangerous. Quite often antibiotics are wrongly prescribed to cure viruses when they are meant to target bacteria. Antibiotics are a type of medicine that is prone to kill microorganisms, or bacteria. By examining the PBS documentary Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria and the article “U.S. government taps GlaxoSmithKline for New Antibiotics” by Ben Hirschler as well as a few other articles can help depict the problem that is of doctors prescribing antibiotics wrongly or excessively, which can led to becoming harmful to the body.
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Overall, stereotypes are typically false accusations and can be destructive to individual opportunities and the society as a whole. Pre-conceived notions of race, gender, and class should be things of the past because they only lead to unnecessary discrimination.
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.
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“An interesting byproduct of the newer solutions to medical dilemmas is the slowly growing resistance of antibiotics in bacteria (“Externalities”, 2016)”. The person who is affected by the negative externality concerning the use of antibiotics by others will see it as lowered utility: either subjective displeasure or potentially explicit costs, such as higher medical expenses in the future to treat infections that could have otherwise been treated easily at a lower cost (Ditah, 2011). In order to mitigate antibiotic resistance, healthcare workers should stop prescribing antibiotics unless it’s truly necessary. Additionally, the government should make more of an effort to tackle antibiotic resistance. People should also be educated about how overuse is
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