Antibiotic resistance is becoming a serious issue in medicine all across the globe. The CDC explains how antibiotic resistance occurs. Certain bacteria or fungi are bad and can make people sick, resulting in infection, and some can even be resistant to antibiotics. These bacteria find ways to survive even when the antibiotics are present. They use resistance mechanisms like plasmids from their DNA. Plasmids can easily carry DNA from one bacterium to another. When they carry resistant bacteria, the resistance multiplies along with the bacteria and spreads their resistance to other types of bacteria via these plasmids. This allows the resistance to move across states, countries, and continents causing more resistance and serious medical issues. Additionally, antibiotics can do more harm than good, as all antibiotics kill good bacteria living in humans, destroying their microbiome. The CDC also tells of the resistance that first arose with Penicillin in 1967. Since the use of antibiotics began many types have resistance strains, making it harder for us to keep using them and getting rid of bacteria-caused infections. Penicillin, vancomycin, amphotericin B, methicillin, azithromycin, imipenem, ciprofloxacin, daptomycin, and several others have at least one bacteria strain that are resistant to them.
The World Health Organization explains how the resistance problem started and what is being done around the world to help solve the problem. Recently, antibiotics have been overprescribed by doctors, as patients go in and ask for antibiotics even when they will not work for them. Also, not all patients take their antibiotics responsibly, making resistance an even bigger problem. Prevention methods include taking antibiotics fully and properly without sharing them, only prescribing antibiotics when needed, not using antibiotics on animals for growth, etc. Although new antibiotics are being made, they will most likely still be made useless as bacteria evolve and learn to become resistant to them. Eventually, when antibiotics become useless as they are used incorrectly, different methods will be used for treatment. They will be a lot longer and will most likely have to occur in hospital, causing more expense for both hospitals and families and cause increased stress for everyone involved. Without antibiotics, simple surgeries will also become bigger problems as risks for infection will increase greatly. Scientists in Denmark were successful, however, in making an antibiotic that can fight resistant E. coli. They found that a mix of mecillinam and cefotaxime can make extended spectrum beta-lactamase sensitive to the effects of the antibiotics. These drugs can be taken orally, making it easier for patients and doctors to administer, causing UTIs to become less of a problem. However, this antibiotic combination only works on a certain strain of ESBL E. coli, so doctors have to ensure that they patient is infected with this before prescribing the antibiotic.
I believe it is absolutely imperative that we educate everyone on the proper use of antibiotics. If people did not go to their doctor and demand antibiotics when they do not need them, we would not have such a large problem. We must explain the difference between viruses and infection from bacteria. Additionally, I think doctors should take more precaution and only prescribe antibiotics when absolutely necessary. It is crazy that resistance is becoming so prevalent that eventually we might not be able to use antibiotics in the future. I also believe the government should prevent farmers from using unnecessary antibiotics that can be easily spread to humans. Antibiotic resistance should be talked about more often people are aware of it and how they can help prevent it from growing.
Micro Madness 