Bacterial diseases are caused by bacteria. Most bacteria reproduce asexually using the fission process. Some bacteria can pick up bits of DNA from dead or broken bacteria cells. Certain viruses that infect bacteria cells may also carry genetic information from one bacterium to another. Antiseptic can either, kill bacteria that cause infection and decay, or slows down their activity. Usually the term can refer to chemicals that affect bacteria, rather than to other agents such as sunlight, heat and cold, and drying, which also kill bacteria or stop their growth. The unearthing of antiseptic action and asepsis is amid the most important discoveries in the history of surgery. Many chemicals will kill germs or stop their growth under the proper conditions. But the tiny organisms that cause disease differ in the ways in which antiseptics and germicides affect them. In medicine, the internal use of antiseptic drugs is very limited. People use disinfectants to clean and …show more content…
Nutrient agar is used to grow bacteria and pure molds. Antibiotics serve as the doctor’s best weapons against pneumonia, typhoid fever, bone infections and many others. There are a few antibiotics in which are not active enough against disease germs. Some antibiotics work well in test tubes, but suspend working when taken into the human body. Bacteria growing in the presence of antibiotics in the body sometimes change so that they are no longer seriously affected by the antibiotics. They then become resistant to the drugs. Some strains of bacteria today can withstand a thousand times more streptomycin than original disease-producing bacteria. Antibiotics often kill bacteria in the body that control the growth of fungi. Today scientist know that infectious diseases are caused by many kinds of germs, including bacteria, viruses and protozoa that attack living tissues causing them to multiply rapidly and
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...
The natural components of antibiotics have been used as local remedies long before humans understood the reasons why these sometimes-radical treatments worked. Penicillin became the first manufactured antibiotic after physician Alexander Fleming published articles regarding this bacteria-disabling mold in 1928. Come 1932, penicillin was commonly used to treat infected war injuries, saving the lives of unnumbered soldiers (Lewis). Since then, penicillin has b...
One thing that must be noted is that contrary to popular belief, infectious agents such as viruses, bacteria, parasites, etc. are not desig...
Antibiotics basically refer to chemical substances that can inhibit and destroy the growth of microorganisms (Gottileb,1976; Katz and Demain,1977). Antibiotic term was first used in 1942 by Selman Waksman to describe any substance produced by a microorganism which interfere with the growth of other microorganism (SA Waksman, 1947). Each antibiotic is produced by a relatively limited number of species and is inherited from specific set of genes. These are the products of secondary metabolism which can be produced commercially by microbial fermentation after active growth has declined. These compounds are generally synthesized in stationary phase especially idiophase (unbalanced growth phase) so these are sometimes called as idiolites(walker, 1974). Their formation is highly influenced not only by the growth conditions but also by the composition of the culture medium.
Some nights I lay awake thinking about the future—thinking about the cities that haven’t been built, the planets that haven’t been found, and the people that I will never get to meet. I am scared for those people.
Throughout history disease has run rampant taking many lives with every passing day. Finding a cure or even just a tool in the battle has been the main focus of scientist throughout time. This focus is what brought us the discovery of antibiotics. Over the years antibiotics have been misused by patients, over prescribed by physicians and have led to resistant strains of bacteria.
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.
When bacteria are frequently exposed to antibiotics it can become resistant to the drug so that it is no longer effective in treating a specific illness (Visser). To compensate for unhygienic environments and to accelerate growth, antibiotics are often given to food animals in the U.S. In 2011, 29.9 million pounds of antibiotics were sold in America for meat and poultry production ("Record"). Many of the types of antibiotics used in food animal production is also used in human medicine, and according to the WHO, “widespread use of antim...
The controversy regarding the sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics in animal feeds is that “super-bugs” are able to evolve. This is a threat to both the health of the animals and humans. What a “super-bug” refers to is a strain of bacteria that has evolved to be resistant to bacteria and lethal to the host organism. These super-bugs account for the death of roughly 48,000 Americans each year (Adams, 2013). These superbugs proliferate in the digestive tracts of hosts. Each dose of antibiotics in the animals’ diets at sub-therapeutic levels increases the likelihood of antibiotic resistance bacteria to evolve. The antibiotics kill the antibiotic sensitive bacteria, but bacteria that are resistant proliferate in the gut of the animals. When these antibiotic resistant bacteria are left to grow in the gut, they can cause infection to the animal or people that consume the animal as food (Falco, 2013, Amachawadl et. al. 2013). Antibiotic-resistance can also be conferred through horizontal gene transfer and other methods, making the mere existence of such bacteria a threat that should not be taken lightly.
Over the years humans have tried every possibility to overcome the health problems, spread of epidemics and infections, disease control and have worked towards a healthy society free of disease and health problems. They have succeeded to a great extent. The book “Good germs, bad germs” describes that though the life expectancy is now far more as it was in previous eras. Epidemic problems and infectious diseases are now getting lesser and lesser and humans are being treated successfully. The hygienic conditions have also been improved so as to ensure least growth of microbes, germs, parasites and bacteria. Antibiotics have been invented to address diseases and infections caused by bacteria and viruses. With all these substantial efforts the biologists, physicians and scientists have triggered another epidemic which is even more severe. They have killed those microbes and bacterial species which were human friendly and as a result of either their disruption or mutation, pathogenic bacteria have even become more active and resistant to treatments. This has led to increased ineffectiveness of antibiotic drugs, low immunity and various infections and inflammatory diseases. The chlorinated water for drinking and food processing along with excessive hygienic conditions indicates our fight against these bacteria and germs. Further, these antibiotics are even given to the livestock which becomes our food and as result many of their resistant germs end up in our digestive tract and other organs. Thus, the war against microbes through excessive cleanliness and use of antibiotics has resulted in antibiotic resistance among humans, which has become one of the prominent problems of medical science
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.
A remarkable breakthrough in medicine occurred in the late 1800s through the work of Louis Pasteur. Pasteur's experiments showed that bacteria reproduce like other living things and travel from place to place. Using the results of his findings, he developed pasteurization, which is the process of heating liquids to kill bacteria and prevent fermentation. He also produced an anthrax vaccine as well as a way to weaken the rabies virus. After studying Pasteur's work, Joseph Lister developed antisepsis, which is the process of killing disease-causing germs. In 1865 before an operation, he cleansed a leg wound first with carbolic acid, and performed the surgery with sterilized (by heat) instruments. The wound healed, and the patient survived. Prior to surgery, the patient would've needed an amputation. However, by incorporating these antiseptic procedures in all of his surgeries, he decreased postoperative deaths. The use of antiseptics eventually helped reduce bacterial infection not only in surgery but also in childbirth and in the treatment of battle wounds. Another man that made discoveries that reinforced those of Pasteur's was Robert Koch. Robert Koch isolated the germ that causes tuberculosis, identified the germ responsible for Asiatic cholera, and developed sanitary measures to prevent disease. (1)
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.
The discovery of antibiotics is attributed to Alexander Fleming who discovered the first antibiotic to be commercially used (Penicillin) in approximately 1928. An antibiotic, also known as an antimicrobial, is a medication that is taken in order to either destroy or slow the growth rate of bacteria. Antibiotics are integral to the success of many medical practises, such as; surgical procedures, organ transplants, the treatment of cancer and the treatment of the critically ill. (Ramanan Laxminarayan, 2013)
Bacteria are found nearly everywhere within the body and most types are harmless or even helpful to bodily function (Novitt-Moreno). While it is important to have these bacteria in the body, pathogenic invaders can cause serious illnesses. Pathogenic bacteria work by either actually attacking a part of the victim’s body or releasing toxic waste products into the body. Bacteria are single-celled and contain all of the cellular mechanisms needed to live, grow, and reproduce (Novitt-Moreno). That means, when treating a bacterial infection, it is critical to have a highly specific antibiotic that can destroy the unwanted