Strategies Raising awareness (3) among the public and healthcare professionals through campaigns and events can help to educate people to the risks of antibiotic resistance and measures they can take to reduce the risk of it. Since 2008 there has been an European Antibiotic awareness day each year which has been found to be not only successful in raising awareness and changing the behaviour of healthcare professionals and the public in the way that they handle antibiotics but it was also quite cost effective. Ensuring GPs prescribe antibiotics responsibly to patients through providing resources to help them can help to reduce the over prescription of antibiotics. In 2012 the Health Protection Agency developed a tool called TARGET which would assist GPs in the proper use of antibiotics. Recently the National Institute for Healthcare Excellence has introduced new guidelines (4) to reduce over prescription.…
Antibiotic resistance is the ability of bacteria to resist the effects of drugs (About Antimicrobial Resistance). It happens when the antibiotic loses its ability to control or kill bacterial growth in the human body. Even though resistance is a natural phenomenon that occurs like natural selection in bacteria, it should not be causing as much of a problem with humans as it has been increasingly through the years (General Background: About Antibiotic…). Antibiotic resistance can be naturally acquired by bacteria through horizontal or vertical gene transfer as well as bacteria having the ability to adopt “free” bacteria from the environment it is in (General Background: About Antibiotic…). The reason antibiotic resistance has become such a…
Antibiotic resistant bacteria are bacteria that are resistant to the antibiotics that at one time were able to kill them. It is a growing issue in today’s society especially since it is unknown how these microbes are able to mutate around a treatment that was once lethal to them. The consensus in the healthcare community is that these microbes will be an increasing threat until a solution is found. There is still discussion and controversy over the best method of identification and infection control that should be put into practice to prevent the spread of multidrug resistant bacteria. However, the most prevalent controversy surrounding this topic seems to be over how the taxpayer’s money is best spent related to new treatment of these microbes,…
Antibiotic Resistance Antibiotic resistance (AR) is where formerly effective medications are having less and less impact on bacteria. The few gram-negative AR resistant bacteria discussed were MERSA resistant staph, KPC, and the NDM1 enzyme with its gene found on 11 different bacterias. Alexander Fleming, founder of the first antibiotic even warned us about this very thing. Now more than ever there is an increasing urgency to find an answer to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance.…
Introduction Cat scratch disease is an infection caused by the bacterium Bartonella henselae. As the name of the disease implies, it is associated with a scratch from an infected cat but is also transmitted through a cat bite and, in some instances, cat fleas (Forbes, 2007). The formation of a papule at the site of the bite or scratch is the initial symptom followed by lymphadenopathy. One of the most common causes of chronic lymphadenopathy in children and adolescents is cat scratch disease (Nervi, 2014).…
The rise of the superbugs Imagine being in hospital sick with a bacterial infection, with doctors not being able to do anything to stop the infection from spreading. This is a superbug scenario. Superbugs are a worldwide worry that people don’t know much about. “At Least 23,000 people in the U.S. each year. Each year, more than two million people in the United States develop some sort of superbug and at least 23,000 of them die as a result.”…
How Does Bacteria Gain Antibiotic Resistance? Antibiotic resistance can only occur when the bacteria changes in some way that reduces the effectiveness of drugs or chemicals designed to cure or prevent infections from further expanding in the body. With resistance, that’s exactly what these forms of bacteria are doing, multiplying and spreading or infecting others. The bacteria’s main goal is to survive and multiply in the environment they were introduced to so introducing an antibiotic will cause the bacteria to somehow adapt to this drug and overcome its effects or simply move out to stay alive.…
1. Introduction Antimicrobials have proved to be one of the most successful medicinal discoveries in history, principally because they have turned bacterial infections which were once the leading cause of death, into controllable conditions.[1, 2] These molecules inhibit the reproduction, prevent vital processes occurring, or destroy the bacterial cell wall to aid in fighting infectious diseases.[3, 4] Antimicrobial therapy is one of the foundation stones of modern medicine, and without effective antimicrobial therapies to limit bacterial infections many modern medical procedures would be considerably more risky, if not a complete waste of time and resources.[5] In addition, rates of morbidity and mortality from bacterial infections would…
The advancement of a modern health care system over the last century, from breakthroughs in sanitation to anaesthesia development, have been among the world’s most impressive accomplishments. According to Michaud, Murray and Bloom (2001), the worldwide life expectancy has increased more in the past one hundred years than any other time in recorded history. This gain was greatest in developed nations, and a significant portion of it can be attributed to developments in public health. Michaud et al. (2001) also believe that “the challenge is to maintain and improve life expectancy and the quality of life that was achieved for most of the world's population during the 20th century” (p. 535).…
Antibiotic Resistance: A Battle to be Fought or a Lost Cause? One of the most controversial issues in the modern scientific world is whether or not antibiotic use, specifically in humans, should be more heavily regulated. It is a question which people have begun asking more and more in recent years as the understanding of antimicrobial resistance continues to unravel itself. Antibiotics are a class of medicine that fight off infections by targeting microorganisms, and they have contributed immensely to the decrease of mortality rates since they were first discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928. However, while they may at first seem like miracles, there is a negative aspect to them that cannot be overlooked, and it comes in the form of antibiotic…
Please find enclosed our manuscript entitled “High Rates of Antibiotics Prescriptions for Outpatients with Acute Respiratory Tract Infections in Japan, 2013-2015: A Retrospective Cohort Study”, which we would like to submit for publication as an original research article in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. This manuscript consists of 20 text pages, 3 tables, 3 supplementary tables and 1 supplementary figure. High rates of antibiotic prescription, especially broad-spectrum, accelerate selective pressure on microbials to acquire resistance. Traveling of resistant microbials makes the problem a global threat.…
Another method in which antibiotic resistance occurs is via the freezing of polymorphisms (Eric D. Brown and Gerald D. Wright 2016). Polymorphisms are discontinuous variations in gene which results in numerous types of individuals within a species an example being the variations that exist between the single Canisfamiliaris species of dog. In the case of antibiotic resistance, freezing of certain polymorphisms means that bacte1ia cells who have variation which adequate makes up for fitness declines, which arise from resistance genes, will smvive and these polymorphisms freeze and become the standard variation for the next generation of bacte1ia. Resulting in a new generation of drug resistant bacteria that function at an efficient fitness.…
Antibiotics have become such a commonly used medicine; some may consider it as regularly used as Tylenol. This thought does not seem that outrageous, but the overuse of antibiotics is quite an epidemic. Antibiotic use is even more of a worry because of the fact that people ignore the need to act on the problem of over-prescribing antibiotics to patients. Some people believe the over-prescription of antibiotics by doctors is not a detriment to society and their immune systems, but rather a helpful accident. Over-prescribing antibiotics is not a good thing at all; the overuse of antibiotics causes antibiotic resistance.…
1.2.2 Mechanism of antibiotic resistance Bacteria may become resistant to various antimicrobial agents through several mechanisms. Major mechanisms of antibiotic resistance in bacteria includes : (1) modification in target site so the antibiotic cannot recognise the target; (2) enzyme production that will inactivate or modify the drug before its effect; (3) expelling or extruding the antibiotic outside the cell by one or more efflux pumps so the drug is unable to reach the target site to exert its antibacterial action; and (4) alterations in the cell membrane permeability that inhibits the access of drug into the cell (Périchon & Courvalin, 2009; Verraes et al., 2013). Antimicrobial resistance could be intrinsic or acquired. Intrinsic resistance…
Antibiotics are substances that can destroy or prevent the growth of the bacteria and cure infections. In 1928, Alexander Fleming who was a Scottish biologist, pharmacologist, and botanist found the first antibiotic, penicillin, in the world. It was a significant discovery in the medical field. During the World War II, the penicillin had saved many lives. According to PBS, “400 million units of pure penicillin were manufactured” and “650 billion units a month” were produced by the end of 1945 (Markel).…