Imtiaz Ibne Alam

Antibiotic Resistance - A Growing Threat For Humans

Antibiotics, the most important life saving drugs, may not show any effects in curing diseases if these resistance grows!

Today antibiotic resistance becomes a lethal threat for human kind. For the reason that day by day, bacteria and other microorganisms are growing stronger and more resistant against the effects of antibiotics (the most widely used drugs to kill or inhibit microorganisms). Accordingly, if you are taking any antibiotic drug, it is necessary for you to keep yourself fully concerned about the drug resistance fact.

What is Antibiotic Resistance?

Antibiotic resistance or antimicrobial resistance can be described as the ability of a microorganism to survive the effects of an anti-bacterial medication. In other words, it's the lost of effectiveness of an antimicrobial drug over bacteria and other microorganisms. According to sciencedaily.com, this resistance of microorganisms grows naturally via natural selection through spontaneous mutation of bacteria, virus and other pathogens.

How Bacteria Becomes Resistant to Antibiotic Drugs?

Random changing in the genetic material or spontaneous mutation of the bacterium is one the vital processes by which bacterium become resistant to antibiotics. You need to know that when an unprompted or encouraged genetic alteration in microorganism confers resistance to antibiotic medications, genes that showed resistance can move among microorganism in a horizontal fashion by transformation, transduction, or conjugation. As a result, genetically altered genes that grows via natural selection and showed resistance to antibiotics may be sheared between microorganisms.

On the other hand, you need to know that antibiotics usually work by neutralizing a crucial bacterial protein. However, random changing in the genetic material can remove that critical protein of bacteria. In addition, these changes in the key protein can discourage the antibiotic from binding to the target site. Anyhow, if the antibiotic does bind to the target site, genetically altered bacteria prevent it from neutralizing the specific protein.

Moreover, spontaneous mutation can also direct to greater production of the antibiotic's target enzyme. With the intention that, too many production of these targeted enzymes will eventually create obstacles for antibiotics from neutralizing the entire. On the other hand, the bacterium may change the permeability of the cell wall, or membrane. In addition, the bacterium may also create obstacles by producing enzymes that can inactivate antibiotics.

What's the Real Threat of Antibiotic resistance?

In actual fact, antibiotic resistance is an environmental pressure for resistant bacteria. Several researchers stated that the resistant bacterium allows mutation not only to survive but also to reproduce. However, several other factors also contribute towards antibiotic resistance including improper use of antibiotics, unnecessary prescriptions from physicians, the use of antibiotics as food additives, and incorrect diagnosis. Thus, it becomes obvious for you to keep yourself fully concerned before taking any antibiotics.

As a final point, you need to know that the resistance to antibiotics is underlying significant threat, risk and suffering for adults and children who have commonly infected with virus, bacteria or other microorganisms. For the reason that, as the resistance grows, it will become difficult or even impossible to treat them with once effective antibiotics.

Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR