Essay On Antibiotic Resistance

The Necessity to Prevent Antibiotic Resistance

Approximately one year ago in Kentucky, a man went to sleep thinking he might have caught a flu. The next day, he is rushed to the local hospital while coughing up chunks of lung tissue; within a few hours he experiences organ failure and lips into a coma. Over the next two days, two other patients come in with the same symptoms and die almost immediately. This epidemic that swept over this small area in Kentucky was an ultra resistant strain of staph infection known as MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (Eisler, 2013). MRSA and other species of resistant bacteria have arisen from the global overuse of antibiotics. Over the years, resistant strains of bacteria have become more and more difficult to fend of using common antibiotic treatments. If something is not done to stop antibiotic resistance, completely resistant strains of bacteria, which we will be unable to kill through use of antibiotics.

Antibiotic resistance is bacteria’s loss of susceptibility to the bactericidal or growth-inhibiting properties of an antibiotics. When a resistant strain of bacteria is the dominant strain in an infection, the infection may be untreatable and deadly he primary mechanisms of bacterial gene transfer are transduction and conjugation. Transduction occurs when a bacterial virus, called a bacteriophage, detaches from one bacterial cell, carrying with it some of that bacterium’s genome, and then infects another cell. When the bacteriophage inserts its genetic content into the genome of the next bacterium, the previous bacterium’s DNA also is incorporated into the genome. Conjugation occurs when two bacteria come into physical contact with each other and a plasmid, sometimes carry...

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... treatment; they then save the leftovers and use them unwisely, the under dosages will not kill the disease and resistance will spread. Three, the drugs are available over the counter in some developing countries, so people often do not give themselves the correct amount and there are few options when the disease becomes serious.

Farmers should find inexpensive alternatives for encouraging animal growth and protecting fruit trees, and improve hygiene for livestock. The public can wash their fruits and vegetables thoroughly, complete the full course of prescriptions, not demand antibiotics for colds and viral infections, and not seek antibiotics for minor conditions. Physicians can try to identify the causative pathogen before prescribing a therapy, place affected patients in separate rooms, and look into new antibiotics and ways to aid existing ones (Levy, 1998).