Antibiotic Resistance And Its Factors: The Use Of Antibiotics

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) said, “Each year in the United States, at least two million people become infected with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics and at least twenty-three thousand people die each year as a direct result of these infections.” (Threat Report 2013) Antibiotics were created to kill bacteria; since they were created, the bacteria have started to become resistant to the antibiotics. Antibiotic resistance is the ability of a microorganism to withstand the effects of an antibiotic. Because of this resistance, I believe that the use of antibiotics have been proven to be more harmful to human health than helpful.

Before I address this topic, it is essential that you know the following: an antibiotic is a medicine that inhibits the growth of, or destroys, microorganisms, antibiotic literally means “against life”; in this case, against microbes, and antibiotic resistance is the ability of a microorganism to withstand the effects of an antibiotic. Also, some drugs work against many organisms; these are called broad-spectrum antibiotics. Drugs effective against few organisms are called narrow-spectrum antibiotics.

Antibiotic resistance evolves naturally through natural selection via random mutation, but it could also be engineered by applying an evolutionary stress on a population. The antibiotic action is an environmental pressure; those bacteria which have a mutation allowing them to survive will live on to reproduce. They will then pass this trait to their offspring, which will be a fully resistant generation. Studies at the Finnish Academy found that using one type of antibiotic increases the resistance of bacteria to other types of antibiotics as well. Antibiotics do not work against illnesses t...

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...pregnancy. No antibiotic has been listed in Category A (no risk for the fetus based on human controlled studies). Administration of antibiotics, such as Amoxycillin and Doxycycline, has been associated with the failure of oral (birth control) preparations. It is unsolved whether antibiotics contribute to pill failure.

However, adult males have also had problems with antibiotics. Protracted antibiotic use can cause penile yeast infections. The male body has a standard contingent of creatures that inhabit the crotch, and antibiotics can purge the body of the good ones, allowing the normally occurring yeast to take over. Elderly patients have few extraordinary problems with antibiotics. Although they often have multiple chronic disorders and receive numerous medications. Adding an antibiotic to the patients procedure poses a further risk for a drug-drug interaction.