For many years we have become increasingly dependant on antibiotics to fight off the bacteria that cause diseases in our bodies. Many of the diseases these bacteria and microbes cause are infectious. For these reasons, it has been noticed that bacteria and other microbes are becoming increasingly resistant to the antibiotics prescribed to sick people. Many doctors prescribe antibiotics for common illnesses, yet other medicines such as home remedies and homeopathy could be used instead. As a result, we are using antibiotics too often, as many sources claim we should only be using them once every three years.”Bacteria have shown a remarkable ability to endure and adapt to their environment including the development of different mechanisms of resistance to most old and new antimicrobial agents”. Because of the frequent prescription, the bacteria and microbes that cause these illnesses are exposed to the same type of antibiotics frequently, thus they are able to adapt and build up resilience against these antibiotics. “Bacteria have developed resistance to all different classes of antibiotics discovered to date” . This is a major problem as we rely so heavily on antibiotics to treat serious illnesses that we are running out of options to treat them with. The prescribing of antibiotics for illnesses that are not life-threatening are now resulting in fewer solutions to cure people affected by diseases that can be fatal.
Bacterial resistance is a problem that has profoundly impacted the medical community. Bacterial resistance results when bacteria become resistant to individual antibiotics through the development of specific defense mechanisms which render the antibiotic ineffective. This problem has become evident in recent years as numerous cases have been reported in which antibiotics are not effective against the bacteria that they have fought off for years. The recent troubles with bacterial resistance have caused panic throughout the United States. The pharmaceutical industry hasn’t been producing many antibiotics because they thought that the antibiotics they had created had solved many of the problems resulting from bacterial infections. An increasing amount of attention has been given to antibiotic resistance with each passing year and experts are optimistic for the future; however, the threat of bacterial resistance exists today and is a major cause for concern.
. 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...
When antibiotics first began to see widespread American usage in the 1940’s, they were heralded as a miracle drug, a description that was not far from the mark considering the great number of debilitating or fatal illnesses that they could rapidly cure. In a time where bacterial diseases that today carry few serious health risks in healthy adults—such as strep throat, ear infections, syphilis, and wound infections—often led to serious debilitation or death, the invention of antibiotics was among the greatest single improvements in public health ever made. And today, more than three quarters of a century after Alexander Fleming discovered the antimicrobial properties of penicillin, antibiotics are as important as ever in maintaining a healthy population, from their ability to treat common infections to the safeguards they provide patients undergoing surgeries and other infection-prone procedures that could otherwise be too risky to perform. However, today many doctors and researchers are beginning to fear that this golden era of antibiotics may be coming to an end due to the ever-increasing threat of antibiotic resistance. There are a number of practices that contribute to increased antibiotic resistance, including the unnecessary prescription, improper dosage, and incorrect usage of antibiotic drugs by humans. But one of the major potential causes of antibiotic resistance does not involve human patients at all. Rather, many believe that the excessive use of antibiotics in food animals is among the leading threats to the future of human ability to fight bacterial infections.
The use of antibiotics or antimicrobial has allowed our worlds nations to flourish for decades. Antibiotics have cured many serious bacterial infections and saved millions of lives due to epidemics and plagues. While antibiotics have helped our nations to flourish, the misuse and overuse of antibiotics or antimicrobials has increased the rate of developing antibiotic resistant bacteria. It is a constant fight between newer, stronger antibiotics and rapidly, evolving resistant bacteria; with no new classifications of antibiotics discovered since the 1970’s, antibiotic resistant bacteria are given the opportunity to dominate. Antibiotics are over prescribed to millions of people each year, studies say more than half of those prescriptions were to treat illness that antibiotics have no effect on. (Aminov,Rustam) Doctors need to stop writing unjustifiable prescriptions for antibiotics and patients need to stop demanding antibiotics from doctors when they are not necessary. The serious nature and likely consequences of misused antibiotics needs to be understood among the public. Knowing what antibiotics are, how they work in the body, and when you need to take them will reduce their widespread overuse. In addition, knowing why and how bacteria become resistant to antibiotics and what tragedy will arise if abusing antibiotics continue. Most importantly, what action and prevention methods be can done to reverse this rise of power in infection causing bacteria.
Currently 700,000 have died from antibiotic resistance, which is a lot higher than the statistics for deaths caused by measles, cholera and tetanus combined. This is showing that already, it has already caused a lot of damage, and it continues to spread.(Walsh, 2014)
Rex, and Anderson. Wise antibiotic use in the age of drug resistance. New York: Cohen, 1997. Print.
“But how did it come to this?” you’re probably asking yourself. Humans may have been studying antibiotics, but so were bacteria – and they’ve b...
I am going to begin my paper by defining bacteria. The next step will be to define antibiotics. I will then continue by explaining the concept of bacterial resistance to antibiotics. I will focus on specific ways in which bacteria become resistant to antibiotics. I will continue with ideas of how to control the resistance. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is a growing phenomenon that becomes more serious as more bacteria resist drugs. I will finish my paper by listing and explaining ideas that are being used now or will be used in the future in an attempt to control the problem of resistance.
Modern medicine claims to have their foot on the throat of the vast majority of bacterial infections, boasting a large arsenal of treatments for the infected patient. Antibiotic drugs have been the answer for the past century in combating once threatening bacterial illnesses. According to Dr. Stuart Levy, “an antibiotic, as we now know it, is a natural substance made by one microorganism that inhibits [or kills] growth of another microorganism” (33). When Sir Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, the world between the world wars thought they were forever saved with the newfound defense against formerly deadly bacteria. The bliss would not last long however, because new strains of bacteria were forming against penicillin and other drugs that scientists and microbiologists were developing since the people consumed the newfound drugs feverishly. Doctors and people ignorantly and ineffectively use these drugs against viral infections and bacterial infections that cannot be treated. Today, with our most diverse cache of antibiotic drugs, it seems like bacteria is growing stronger against anything we throw at it. Why? Due to the overuse of antibiotics and ...