Some diseases can be prevented by vaccination and
some can be cured with drugs.
Unlike 'symptom relievers' like
aspirin, antibiotics like penicillin do kill or inhibit the growth of
certain bacterial infections.
However, they are not a 'blanket
cure', different types of bacteria require different types of
antibiotic and the correct match is required to effect a cure.
Never-the-less, the widespread
use of antibiotics has greatly reduced the number of deaths from
communicable diseases caused by bacteria.
Unfortunately, antibiotics do
NOT destroy virus infections from e.g. flue or cold viral infections.
Virus attacks can be treated
with very specialised and expensive anti-viral drugs, but
since viruses reproduce in your own body cells, its difficult to
avoid damage to you own healthy body cells.
Other drugs e.g. the antibiotic
penicillin do kill or inhibit the growth of certain bacterial
infections by interfering with the pathogen's metabolism e.g. the
biochemical processes that build bacterial cell walls.
Antibiotics do not affect
human cells AND they do not kill fungal, protist and viral pathogens
- they only kill bacteria.
Bacteria are single-celled
organisms that rapidly divide.
Most are harmless, but some are
not, causing bacterial infections.
Antibiotics, including penicillin, are medicines that
help to cure bacterial disease by killing infectious
bacteria or inhibiting their growth inside the body, without killing your own body cells!
What is an antibiotic? How do
they work?
NOTE: An antibiotic kills
bacteria in the body.
BUT an antiseptic kills
bacteria outside the body e.g. on the skin or
disinfecting a worktop in the kitchen - do NOT ingest an antiseptic.
Antibiotics cannot be used
to kill viral pathogens, which live and reproduce inside
cells.
Antibiotics do NOT destroy
viruses, typified by the cold and flue viruses we all suffer from.
Why don't antibiotics kill
viruses?
Viruses and bacteria have
significantly different structure and a different way of
surviving.
Viruses are surrounded by a
protective protein coating and don't have cell walls that can be
attacked by antibiotics - antibiotics prevent bacteria building
cell walls and the membrane bursts destroying the bacterial
cell.
Viruses
make your own body cells reproduce the invasive virus and unfortunately
anti-viral drugs may attack good cells too!
It is quite difficult, and
costly, to develop and market anti-viral drugs that will only
kill the virus and not your own body's healthy cells.
Antibiotics like
penicillin kill or prevent the growth of harmful pathogens, they kill the
bacteria but not your own healthy body cells.
Antibiotics work by
inhibiting processes in bacterial cells inhibiting cell
division, eventually killing them, but they do NOT affect
the cells of the host organism.
Some antibiotics inhibit the
building of the cell walls of bacteria, which prevents cell
division - these antibiotics do not affect human cells which do
not have cell walls.
Different antibiotics attack
different bacteria, so it is important that specific bacterial infections
should be treated with the appropriate specific antibiotics.
Doxycycline is an antibiotic to
treat infection from the chlamydia bacteria.
Doxycycline works by
interfering with the synthesis of important proteins inside the
bacterial cells, that chlamydia need to survive.
Other antibiotics like
penicillin are not as effective, hence the need to constant
research and develop new antibiotics, especially more resistant
strains of bacteria evolve.
The use of antibiotics
has greatly reduced deaths from infectious bacterial
diseases.
However, overuse and inappropriate use of antibiotics
has increased the rate of development of antibiotic
resistant strains of bacteria.
You need to be aware that it is difficult to develop
drugs that kill viruses without also damaging the body’s
tissues.
Explaining the use of antibiotics to
control infection:
Antibiotics are taken internally e.g.
intravenous syringe injection, or orally taken by tablet or liquid suspension.
Antibacterials to treat bacterial infections
Probably the most well known antibacterial
is the antibiotic penicillin which is effective against many bacterial
infections BUT NOT viruses like the common cold or flue.
An antibiotics can kill bacteria or prevent
them growing and reproducing.
Many strains of bacteria, including MRSA, have
developed resistance to antibiotics due to mutations, which cause stronger more
resilient strains of bacteria to survive as a result of
natural selection.
To prevent further resistance
arising it is important to avoid over-use of antibiotics and only use when
necessary and complete the course of treatment..
Knowledge of the development of resistance in bacteria
is limited to the fact that pathogens mutate, producing
resistant strains.
Mutations of pathogens produce new strains.
Antibiotics and vaccinations may no longer be effective
against a new resistant strain of the pathogen.
The new
strain will then spread rapidly because people are not
immune to it and there is no effective treatment.
Can bacteria become resistant
to antibiotics?
Unfortunately the answer is yes!
Bacteria will sometimes quite naturally mutate into forms that are resistant
to current antibiotics, so if you are infected with a new strain of bacteria,
your resistance from your 'current' antibiotic is not as effective.
If an infection is treated with
an antibiotic, any resistant bacteria from any mutations will survive and this means
more resistant bacteria
can survive and reproduce to infect other people, while the non-resistant
strains will tend to be reduced.
This bacterial mutation is an example of
natural
selection at the individual cell level and drug companies are constantly
trying to develop new antibiotics to combat the new evolving strains of
harmful bacteria - but new harmful 'superbugs' are becoming more common the
more we use antibiotics and new epidemics can break out!
MRSA, methicillin-resistant
staphylococcus aureus causes serious wound infections (including after
surgery in a hospital), can't be treated with many current antibiotics and
causes serious wound infections that can be fatal to young babies or elderly
people in particular.
Misuse by over-prescribing antibiotics is
believed to be causing the rise of mutant resistant strains of bacteria, so
doctors are being advised to avoid over-prescribing antibiotics to reduce
the mutation rate and not treating mild infections with antibiotics.
Symptoms like headaches
or sore throats are not a justification for being prescribed
antibiotics. Unfortunately, many patients (for various
reasons) are prescribed antibiotics when they are actually
suffering from a viral infection.
BUT, if an antibiotic is
appropriately prescribed, you should always complete the
course, even if you feel a lot better, this is to maximise killing the bacterial infection and
minimise
the chance of passing on of the infection.
Understand that antibiotics kill individual pathogens of the
non-resistant strain.
Individual resistant pathogens survive and
reproduce, so the population of the resistant
strain increases.
Now, antibiotics are not used to treat
non-serious infections, such as mild throat
infections, so that the rate of development of
resistant strains is slowed down.
The development of antibiotic-resistant strains of
bacteria necessitates the development of new antibiotics.
