What is the main cause of the increase in the numbers of antibiotic resistant bacteria in hospitals?

Why has there been a large increase of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria?

Overuse of traditional antibiotics has caused a selection of those bacteria that are resistant to the antibiotic.

How could you explain the increase of infection in hospitals by antibiotic-resistance bacterial?

Bacteria become resitant to antibiotics by evolution .

Antibiotic resistance in bacteria is the result of?

It is due to a selection process. Bacteria, like us, have individual genes and the antibiotics will kill off those that are affected by it but not the ones that resistant. These resistant forms will be the ones that survive. We are actually selecting for one that are immune to the antibiotic.

What process can lead to an increase in the proportion of antibiotic-resistant bacteria?

This is due to mutation and natural selection. Only those who are resistant survive and therefore those carrying the genetic trait of being resistant will be the only ones breeding meaning this trait will be in the entire population.

What is the increasing resistance of M tuberculosis to streptomycin is most likely due to?

An estimated 95% of TB sufferers are in developing countries with the advent of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the world in the number of TB sufferers will increase.

Is E. coli resistant to vancomycin?

In most infected individuals, symptoms of E. coliinfection last about a week and resolve without any long-term problems. Antibiotics do not improve the illness, and some medical researchers believe that these medications can increase the risk of developing post-diarrheal hemolytic uremic syndrome.

Why does penicillin not work on all bacteria?

Penicillin comes from an antibiotic made by one microbe that acts only against certain others. Some microbes are just resistant toward the antibiotic and another will have to be used. At times not enough or a dose that is too weak will prevent the antibiotic from working. Some antibiotics will work only on Gram negative or Gram positive bacteria. Some are broad spectrum and will work on both.It just is that penicillin resistant bacteria are not affected by penicillin. These have mutated and evolved to resist penicillin. These are often called "super bugs".

How does the misuse of antibiotics affect the evolution of disease-causing bacteria?

Misuse of antibiotics can lead to the development of antibiotic resistance in disease-causing bacteria. This occurs when bacteria evolve mechanisms to withstand the effects of antibiotics, making the drugs less effective in treating infections. Over time, this can make certain infections harder to treat and increase the risk of spreading antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

How is antibiotic overuse a bad thing?

If you overuse it then when you really need it, it won't work. The reason is that your doctor should do a culture, like a throat swab, and run a sensitivity test to see if an antibiotic is needed and which one will affect the microbe. You want to hit the microbe with accuracy and not with a "shot-gun". When treating the microbe with the right drug, the persons' normal flora will not become resistant to that antibiotic. I get really upset if a culture and sensitivity isn't done because the antibiotic may be needed to knock a microbe out and now it will not work at all or have to be given higher doses.

If a bacterial isolate shows intermediate to moderate resistance to an antibiotic bow might this antibiotic still be successfully used in treatment of this microbe?

Pair with something that has a different attack site. DO NOT answer this question on a test with "increase dosage" that will do nothing but make the drug more resistant.

Why has there been a large increase in the number of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria?

Like all organisms, bacteria vary from each other in many things. Let's say that you become infected, and must take an antibiotic like penicillin. A few of those bacteria are going to have a variation that makes them just a wee bit harder to kill than the others. In a few hours, many of the other bacteria have died from the antibiotic, but the ones that are a wee bit harder to kill continue to live and create many more bacteria like themselves that are harder to kill. For the sake of argument, let's say that you quit taking the antibiotic before quite all of the bacteria died. What would that leave? Yep, the ones that were harder to kill are left. If you had been wise, you would have taken your medicine the full 10 days, and all the bacteria would have died. But, no . . . so you now have a new strain of bacteria that are a little resistant to penicillin. Let's say you pass the bacteria on to someone else, and they, in turn, do not take their medicine the full 10 days. Then, the harder to kill bacteria die off after a few days, but some of THEM have altered just a little to become even MORE resistant, and they don't die, but make zillions of more bacteria which are even harder to kill. Over a period of time, after millions of cycles of the above, a small amount of bacteria have become so hard to kill that even after 10 days, they are still alive and making new, harder to kill bacteria (while the weaker ones die). These tough bacteria now spread to other people, as is the way of such things, and before you know it, these new resistant bacteria are found across a continent, or even around the world. So doctors use stronger antibiotics for people infected with these new, tough bacteria. And enough people will not take their medicine for the full 10 days that an even newer strain of bacteria emerges that are resistant even to the stronger antibiotic. So what happens when these bacteria eventually grow resistant to even the strongest antibiotics? What happens is, there is no more magic medicine to make people well from their infections, and many people start dying from their infections from our new super-bacteria.

What happens if you take antibiotic course faster than recommended?

Basically, you waste the antibiotic and run the risk of getting what is known as a super infection. The proper dosage and timing of an antibiotic is clinically established. By taking the antibiotic faster than recommended, it does not increase the effectiveness of the drug, and you will run out of the prescription before the regimen was to be completed. Consequently, all the microbes will not be killed, and the most resistant ones can remain able to rebound into an infection that the antibiotic is unable to fight. The best advice is to follow the directions on the prescription. Take the correct dosage at the correct times until the prescription is gone, regardless of how you feel. The last day or two of the antibiotic is the most critical. That is when the most resistant bugs are being killed.