A Review And Research Of Multidrug Resistance Essay

Antibiotics have played an essential role in the fight against diseases and infections since the 1940’s. Antibiotics are a leading cause for the rise of global average life expectancy in the 20th and 21st century. They have greatly reduced illnesses and deaths due to diseases. With the introductions of antibiotics in the 1940’s, like penicillin into clinical practice, formally deadly illnesses became immediately curable and saved thousands of lives (Yim 2006). Antibiotic use has been beneficial and when prescribed and taken correctly their effects on patients are exceedingly valuable. However, because these drugs have been used so widely and for such a long period of time the bacteria that the antibiotics are designed to kill have adapted,

A current predicament in the field of science is antibiotic resistance against superbugs.Though fighting against superbugs; which can be defined as a strain of bacteria unable to be killed using multiple antibiotics, is now a large problem, in the past it was not. The evolution of resistance in bacteria due to antibiotic abuse and lack of product development has brought upon us once again the fear of a pre-antibiotic era; one where simple, once easily defeated infections could kill. Already, infectious diseases are the 3rd leading cause of death in the US and the 2nd across the entire world, and drug resistant superbugs send 2 million Americans to hospitals every year; killing 23,000 of those people. And any bacterium can quickly and easily become multidrug resistant, the leading cause of this being antibiotic misuse in both humans and animals.( "Clinical Infectious Diseases." The Epidemic of Antibiotic-Resistant Infections: A Call to Action for the Medical Community from the Infectious Diseases Society of America. UCLA Medical School. Web. 27 Mar. 2016.)

Widespread use of antibiotics has been very controversial in the media as well in the general population. Due to these controversies, it is very misunderstood to how antibiotics work leading to many patients in the hospital setting wanting to take them when it is not necessary or refusing to take when it is necessary for their survival. Some of this controversy is due to antibiotic resistance, which has spread an alarming rate in the 21st century (Walsh, 2000). Antibiotic resistance is the result of very strong bacteria or microbes that are resistant to the antibiotic prescribed and those microbes accumulate overtime by their survival, reproduction and transfer, leading to increased levels of antibiotic resistance.

Dr. Martin Blaser, author of Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics is Fueling Our Modern Plagues, paints antibiotics as a negative force in the world that causes disease. Dr. Blaser has studied the role of bacteria in human disease for more than thirty years at Vanderbilt University, and has experience as the director of the Human Microbiome Project at New York University. He also works with the National Institute of Health on infectious diseases. Meanwhile, Dr. David Shlaes, author of Antibiotics: The Perfect Storm, focuses on the drugs’ ability to cure disease. Dr. Shlaes has worked for 30 years in anti-infective academia, industry, and consulting. He served as Professor of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University for five years, and then moved to industry, where he became vice president of Infectious Diseases at Wyeth Research. Later, he took a position as executive vice president of research and development at Idenix Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and formed his own consulting company. He now works predominantly with biotech companies and venture capital firms in their evaluation of anti-infective companies. While they take different approaches, the two doctors concur that antibiotic resistance is a major problem and that society needs to find ways to slow it down. One way to slow down the spread of resistant bacteria is finding ways to ensure

Like any other organism, bacterium are subject to evolutionary pressure. Antibiotic resistance in bacteria is rarely the result of a single mutation leading to full resistance, but rather the result of a series of mutations that incrementally increased antibiotic resistance. For example, in the case of fluoroquinolone resistance, resistance started with a mutation in the efflux pump, granting Streptococcus pneumoniae the ability to survive certain treatment regimens (13). This became an issue when people started to misuse their antibiotics. In this particular example, because patients did not follow their prescription regimens, they only killed the bacteria not resistant to fluoroquinolone. This selective pressure drove bacteria to further develop fluoroquinolone resistance, meaning that the initial infection remained untreated, and would now require a

Since antibiotics, such as penicillin, became widely available in the 1940s, they have been called miracle drugs. They have been able to eliminate bacteria without significantly harming the other cells of the host. Now with each passing year, bacteria that are immune to antibiotics have become more and more common. This turn of events presents us with an alarming problem. Strains of bacteria that are resistant to all prescribed antibiotics are beginning to appear. As a result, diseases such as tuberculosis and penicillin-resistant gonorrhea are reemerging on a worldwide scale (1).

One of the biggest growing problems in our health care system is hospital acquired infections. Some of the common infections are known as "super bugs' or multidrug-resistant organisms such as Clostridium difficile (C.diff) and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Multidrug-resistant organisms means that the pathogens can resist the effects of drugs, are not killed and their growth is not stopped which can ultimately threaten a patient's safety. This is why hospitals are looking into other methods to help ensure more effective environmental cleaning and disinfection. That is where pulsed UV light disinfection systems are coming into play.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines multi-drug resistant organisms (MDROs) “as microorganisms, predominantly bacteria that are resistant to one or more classes of antimicrobial agents” ("Management of multidrug-resistant organism," 2006). The following list represents widely known MDROs:

There are many risk factors that are associated with multidrug-resistant (MDRO) such as previous exposure to antimicrobial agents, advanced age, and invasive procedures or devices. The previous risk factors make it hard for the body to fight off these drug resistant infections (Treas & Wilkinson, 2014).

Antibiotics has played a huge role in the field of medicine since it was first discovered in 1928. Antibiotics are antimicrobial drug that kills or inhibits growth of diseases which prevents many illnesses. However, in the past decade, Antibiotic resistant bacteria has become the world’s latest pandemic. Many strains of bacteria have adapted and developed resistance against antibiotics. According to the CDC, “at least two million people are infected with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics and at least 23,000 people die each year as a direct result of these infections.” (CDC) This is a problem because antibiotics are the number one defense tactics against bacterial infections. Without this line of defense, people vulnerable to bacteria growth which can cause problems in health.

Antibiotic development is one of the modern marvels of medicine. This is the first external tool that people have to fight against bacterial infections. The first drug developed was Penicillin. This medication is so effective that it is still used today. From its structure, every other antibacterial drug was developed. Today, there are hundreds of options available for treating infections. Unfortunately, this has had significant ramifications on the development of resistance to these medications. As the infections continue to learn and evolve, it is important that people educate themselves on what this means and the impacts it has.

When the first antibiotics were manufactured in 1928, they were attack mechanisms that bacteria could use to attack competitors. Bacterial resistance formed as a way of defending against these strong chemicals. The same happens when humans administer synthesized antibacterial chemicals – the bacteria evolve resistance to the antibiotics (“Antimicrobial Resistance: What’s the Issue and Why is it so Important,” 2016). Bacteria can develop the ability to counteract the antibiotic before it does harm. Others can pump the antibiotic out, while others can change the antibiotic attack site.

The overuse of antibiotics has been a problem for well over a decade. This misuse leads to many nonvisible problems arising within the human population. As the use of antibiotics increases, the number of antibiotic resistant bacteria also increases. When bacteria become resistant to an antibiotic, another antibiotic must be used to try and kill it and the cycle becomes vicious. Michael Martin, Sapna Thottathil, and Thomas Newman stated that antimicrobial resistance is, “an increasingly serious threat to global public health that requires action across all government sectors and society” (2409).

Antibiotics have the ability to kill or hinder the growth of bacteria. Antibiotics contain compounds that are naturally produced by organisms to combat diseases caused by microbes. Discovery of penicillin by Sir Alexander Fleming became the first stepping stone of many new antibiotics of today’s modern medicine. Antibiotics typically invade the very components that make up bacteria, such as cell walls and metabolic pathways (Sato et al., 2014). However, frequent mutations of bacteria cause today’s strains to become more resistant. One of many ways which bacteria undergo mutation is through horizontal transfer of genes (Lindsay J.A., 2013). The war against disease is a battle that humanity has fought for centuries, and only

The discovery of antimicrobial agents for the treatment of infectious diseases has been heralded as one of the greatest medical achievements of the 20th century. However, use, misuse, and abuse of antimicrobial agents has led to an increase in the population of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria and has become a major public health threat the world over. Unfortunately the pace of developing new treatments has not kept pace with the growing problem, leading to increased mortality and morbidity rates. Only through education programs and development of new classes of treatment can this epidemic hoped to be controlled. The proliferation of antibiotic resistance is a continuing problem for all members of the human race and only with concerted efforts of all can the continued efficacy of antibiotics be preserved.