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Since the invention of antibiotics, humans have overused them now many superbugs have become resistant. They are growing faster than we are producing new antibiotics and new ones are harder to make. This means that in a few years antibiotics could become useless.
It's not a crisis - but generally the only thing you can do is to stop taking antibiotics unless you actually need them. It used to be that parents would *demand* antibiotics for their children, if they came in with just a cold and scratchy throat. Some doctors still prescribe it as a "just in case" before getting the culture results back from the lab.
Prevention is well and good but I think some people go overboard. The more antibiotics you take, the more likely you are to have a suppressed immune system, and the more vulnerable you are to infectious diseases.
However, if you DO have an infection and reject antibiotics completely, you risk getting even sicker AND if it's contagious, you risk infecting everyone you come in contact with.
So it's a delicate balance. Take them when you know you need them, don't take them when you know you don't need them. And when you're not sure yet because you have to wait for tests - decide with your doctor if waiting for those results is worth the risk. That will depend on what they suspect is wrong, and how far along you are in the illness.
I agree with Anon except for one point. Antibiotics do not suppress the immune system. They just kill or weaken bacteria and stop them from multiplying, giving the immune system time to recognize and deal with the infection. People do not develop resistance to antibiotics; bacteria do.
It is sometimes difficult for a doctor to know whether an sickness is caused by bacteria or a virus. Many respiratory illnesses are viral, and waiting on the antibiotic is a reasonable approach. Most urinary infections are bacterial, so those are usually treated with antibiotics even before culture results are available.
So the first line of defense against resistance is not using antibiotics when they are not needed.
Resistance is more likely to happen if bacteria are exposed to an antibiotic for a brief time. That is why you need to finish the entire prescription even if you feel better before you run out of pills. The fewer living bacteria there are from the infection in your system, the less opportunity for them to multiply and mutate when the antibiotic is stopped.
Do not skip doses.
Do not save antibiotics for "the next time."
Do not take antibiotics prescribed for someone else.
It's not a crisis - but generally the only thing you can do is to stop taking antibiotics unless you actually need them. It used to be that parents would *demand* antibiotics for their children, if they came in with just a cold and scratchy throat. Some doctors still prescribe it as a "just in case" before getting the culture results back from the lab.
Prevention is well and good but I think some people go overboard. The more antibiotics you take, the more likely you are to have a suppressed immune system, and the more vulnerable you are to infectious diseases.
However, if you DO have an infection and reject antibiotics completely, you risk getting even sicker AND if it's contagious, you risk infecting everyone you come in contact with.
So it's a delicate balance. Take them when you know you need them, don't take them when you know you don't need them. And when you're not sure yet because you have to wait for tests - decide with your doctor if waiting for those results is worth the risk. That will depend on what they suspect is wrong, and how far along you are in the illness.
It may not be a full-blown crisis on par with a world war, but its rapidly becoming an extremely serious public health problem.
Even without misuse, this problem was destined to occur at some point. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is simply evolution in progress. Its nothing more and nothing less. If a colony of bacteria is assaulted by an antibiotic most will die, but there are likely to be a few survivors. Over time, those survivors will pass on traits to other bacteria that will make them resistant to antibiotics. Misuse of antibiotics (taking too many antibiotics or not finishing a course prescribed by the doctor) will accelerate this process.
Its important to understand the dimensions of the problem. Most people use antibiotics to treat things like a strep throat, bronchitis, a sinus infection, or pneumonia. The antibiotics that treat these problems have been effective and have been relatively slow to develop resistance to microbes. The bigger problem lies with infections caused by staph bacteria. There is a term for such infections known as MRSA. Such infections are incredibly difficult to treat and some resist every antibiotic that we currently have. However, all bacteria are showing increasing resistance.
The public needs to be educated about the problem. Antibiotics will not kill viruses which cause most colds and sore throats. Although, sometimes colds turn into sinus infections that are bacterial and antibiotics are effective against these. The best strategy when one has a cold or sore throat is to simply wait. One should refrain from asking for antibiotics until approximately ten days has gone by. However, an elevated temperature sooner than this may be reason to consider an antibiotic.
As a parent, I sympathize though with the dilemma we sometimes find ourselves in. Often, we do not have time to keep taking a sick child back and forth to the doctor. Nor, do we want our children to miss more than a day or two of school. At the extreme, there are situations where parents wait too long to put a child on an antibiotic and the child develops a severe bacterial infection. There have been a couple of deaths in my area precisely because this happened. So, it can be a struggle at times to know exactly what to do.
In the final analysis, despite everything we do it is going to be necessary to discover and develop more antibiotics to deal with the emergence of super bugs. The pharmaceutical industry has been slow to develop new drugs. Part of this maybe due to their lack of profitability. It is much more profitable to produce a drug for a chronic health condition like high cholesterol than it is to develop a drug that will cure a disease and no longer be needed by a patient after ten to fourteen days.
Even without misuse, this problem was destined to occur at some point. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is simply evolution in progress. Its nothing more and nothing less. If a colony of bacteria is assaulted by an antibiotic most will die, but there are likely to be a few survivors. Over time, those survivors will pass on traits to other bacteria that will make them resistant to antibiotics. Misuse of antibiotics (taking too many antibiotics or not finishing a course prescribed by the doctor) will accelerate this process.
Its important to understand the dimensions of the problem. Most people use antibiotics to treat things like a strep throat, bronchitis, a sinus infection, or pneumonia. The antibiotics that treat these problems have been effective and have been relatively slow to develop resistance to microbes. The bigger problem lies with infections caused by staph bacteria. There is a term for such infections known as MRSA. Such infections are incredibly difficult to treat and some resist every antibiotic that we currently have. However, all bacteria are showing increasing resistance.
The public needs to be educated about the problem. Antibiotics will not kill viruses which cause most colds and sore throats. Although, sometimes colds turn into sinus infections that are bacterial and antibiotics are effective against these. The best strategy when one has a cold or sore throat is to simply wait. One should refrain from asking for antibiotics until approximately ten days has gone by. However, an elevated temperature sooner than this may be reason to consider an antibiotic.
As a parent, I sympathize though with the dilemma we sometimes find ourselves in. Often, we do not have time to keep taking a sick child back and forth to the doctor. Nor, do we want our children to miss more than a day or two of school. At the extreme, there are situations where parents wait too long to put a child on an antibiotic and the child develops a severe bacterial infection. There have been a couple of deaths in my area precisely because this happened. So, it can be a struggle at times to know exactly what to do.
In the final analysis, despite everything we do it is going to be necessary to discover and develop more antibiotics to deal with the emergence of super bugs. The pharmaceutical industry has been slow to develop new drugs. Part of this maybe due to their lack of profitability. It is much more profitable to produce a drug for a chronic health condition like high cholesterol than it is to develop a drug that will cure a disease and no longer be needed by a patient after ten to fourteen days.
"A team of scientists from the University of Maryland School of Medicine has found the strongest evidence yet that bacteria occasionally transfer their genes into human genomes, finding bacterial DNA sequences in about a third of healthy human genomes and in a far greater percentage of cancer cells. The results, published today (20 June [2013]) in PLOS Computational Biology, suggest that gene transfer from bacteria to humans is not only possible, but also somehow linked to over-proliferation: either cancer cells are prone to these intrusions or the incoming bacterial genes help to kick-start the transformation from healthy cells into cancerous ones."
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