preview

Antibacterial Antibiotics And Its Effects On The Growth And Production Of Bacterial Infections

Decent Essays

Antibacterial antibiotics are a substance present in fungi, which inhibits the growth and production of bacterial infections. The discovery of the first antibiotic, penicillin, was a turning point in medical history, as illnesses that were once perceived as difficult to treat or even fatal, now had a possible treatment. After the discovery of penicillin, the misuse and overuse of antibiotics become common in many different professions. This has resulted in bacteria becoming less easily detected due to structural changes, with some even being multi-resistant, such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and Vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (VRSA) (Williams 2014).
Types of antibiotics
Antibiotics were produced in the late 1940s, with 1950s-1970s being the golden age for discovery of antibiotics and overall, antibiotics are classed into 17 groups, with penicillin and vancomycin being two different classes of antibiotics (Zuchora-Walske 2013). Williams (2014) states that ‘antibiotics are classified according the mechanism of action, chemical structure or if of broad or narrow spectrum.’ Board spectrum antibiotics are effective against multiple types of bacteria, while narrow spectrum are only effective against specific, i.e. fewer bacteria. A method of determining antibiotic response to particular bacterium, as well as its cell wall structure is by Gram-staining, which tests the bacteria’s cell wall and its

Get Access