What is the problem with antibiotic resistance?

Answer 1

There has been, and still is a lot of abuse, in the direction of excess prescription, or necessary prescription of antibiotics. This gives an open door to bacteria to develop an immunity to many antibiotics, just to the point where certain infections, such as staphylococcus, streptococcus and other potentially mortal infections , becoming completely untreatable by the usual antibiotics, and in certain cases, by any antibiotic. Certain types of staphylococcus in particular are potentially mortal, especially those of a hospital origin, being immune to all known antibiotics. Although many doctors now are aware of the dangers of excessive usage of antibiotics, it is, unfortunately, a bit late in certain cases.

Answer 2

Antibiotics resistance has led to the development of so called superbugs like MRSA. It occurs when antibiotics courses aren't taken properly and the bacteria develop protective layers called endospores. They bacteria then mutates and are resistant to that antibiotic therefore the bacteria will be harder to clear in the next person who is infected by it - therefore medical professionals must constantly develop new antibiotics.

Answer 3

There is no cure-all answer to this question, but some of the things that we can do are the following:

• We can be more careful as we experiment and work to limit the exposure that people have to artificial superbugs.
• We can also encourage doctors to be more careful when they are treating illness, and try not to use the strongest antibiotics unless they are needed.
• We can also research better ways to treat and prevent disease.

Answer 4

We all remember the tale of Fleming coming back one-day finding sort of mess in his lab. He found a mold growing on his plate he had streaked with staphylococcus.
He also noticed a clear space around the mold. He was not the first to notice that bacteria and molds didn't get along. He said that the mold produced an antibiotic.

He didn't go any further than that since others have reported the same thing. The idea though was picked up by another scientist who tried to make enough of the antibiotic to be useful. Sometime later enough was produced using a different mold. There were no antibiotics until that time. Although sulfa was used, it was a powder that was put into open wounds.

Fleming said that some day (if we are not careful) we would end up with an enormous problem with the antibiotic resistance and THAT has just occurred.

In an article, a South American woman, has died from a normally responsive intestinal bacteria. She was treated with 23 antibiotics, and that microbe was resistant to all 23.

Even he saw that if we weren't careful when and how we used antibiotics, we would end up in this state with resistant forms. Where are we going to go from here?

Answer 5

superbugs cannot be treated by the medications we currently have - they are RESISTANT, hence a serious threat.