Antibiotic Resistance And Its Effects

“The Last Resort,” by Maryn McKenna is an article about antibiotic resistance. It explains the increase of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae also known as CREs which are a class of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. CREs have been described as “a risk as serious as terrorism”(McKenna, 2013, p.394). CREs can cause bladder, lung, and blood infections that can develop into life-threatening septic shock. Unfortunately, it kills half of the people who contract it. This bacteria is resistant even to carbapenems, which are considered drugs of last resort because of the serious health risks in taking them. “Antibiotics have been falling to resistance for almost as long as people have been using them; Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin, warned about the possibility when he accepted his Nobel prize in 1945”(McKenna, 2013, p.394). Although CREs was first discovered almost 15 years ago, it did not become a public-health priority until just recently. The North Carolinan strain of Klebsiella produced an enzyme called Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase or KPC for short. It broke down carbapenems which made the strongest antibiotic now resistant. “Physicians find themselves caught between using bad drugs or using no drugs at all”(McKenna, 2013,

The article “The End of Antibiotics” discusses a 57 year old man that was dying and how doctors could only sit by while his condition deteriorated. This man was not shot or stabbed, he was infected with antibiotic resistant bacteria that was slowly killing him. He died months later after being bombarded with antibiotics in the form of capsules, tablets, and IVs (Begley par.1). This is the unsettling power that superbugs like this one has over modern day medicine. A superbug is a bacteria that has evolved its cellular structure to resist antibiotics. Dr. Richard Wenzel of the University of Iowa stated, “Only a few years after penicillin came into wide use with World War II, strains of staph had emerged

The misuse and overdose of the antibiotics increase the resistance problem. It can cause these bacteria to

The second installment of the video series “Rx for Survival,” concerned itself with implications pertaining to bacteria that have become antibiotic-resistant and was titled “Rise of the Superbugs.” The video presented the cases of individuals who were afflicted with maladies resulting from bacterial infections that were not being impeded by the normative pharmaceutical care that we have used for many decades and take for granted.

Is the United States Healthcare system equipped to address the increasing threat from resistant Staphylococcal aureus, and resistant gram negative infection in US hospitals?

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

In today’s modern society, the use of antibiotics is becoming more and more prevalent. Due to the global population’s increased usage of medicines, some types of bacteria have developed antibiotic resistance, creating a race of superbugs. Superbugs are bacteria that are resistant to multiple types of antibiotics, and have the ability to survive and even multiply, despite antibiotic presence. This causes great danger to society as individuals infected with these bugs cannot be treated, as the antibiotics are made redundant. (State Government of Victoria, 2015) The looming threat of widespread antibiotic resistant bacteria raises the question,

Antibiotic resistance occurs when antibiotics are no longer effective in controlling bacterial growth. The phenomenon of antibiotic resistance can be explained by the processes of selective pressure in which the strongest strains of bacteria survive antibiotic therapy, resulting in "superbugs" that are resistant to almost every type of antibiotic available for use (Davies & Davies, 2010). Because of this, certain bacterial infections are evolving that have no effective treatments. This resistance creates a threat to the common medicinal practices of today and can be seen as a global problem; perhaps one of the world's most serious problems. The issue of antibiotic resistance is emerging rapidly as a result of a myriad of uniformed practices and misuse of antibiotics.

Who is responsible for the massive number of people loosing the fight with antibiotic resistance every day? Who will come up with the change we are all expecting to see? Well, unfortunately it is too late to prevent the occurrence of something as unfortunate and undesirable as the situation we are put it. By the end you finish reading this sentence the number of deaths caused by the antimicrobial bacteria would have already increased by tens, if not hundreds. Pharmaceutical companies seem to be our only way out of this vicious circle. Unless new substances are discovered, which can both cure diseases and fight the antimicrobial bacteria back, medicine will start to face serious impediments. There will be an huge increase in the costs health care systems have to pay for treatments and tests. On top of that, primary health care will need to hire more health care providers including carers, nurses and doctors. Beside the costs of hiring extra staff, high amounts of money will need to be allocated for trainings and development. The sad thing is that even with extra staff the patients will have less chances of getting better and survavil rates will decrease. Some, actually most, of the health care systems will struggle to provide the increased amounts of money, in which case, the available sum of money will have to be divided to manage to meet all the

Antibiotics have been an important instrument in public health since 1928, saving the lives of people around the world. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2015), about half of antibiotics used in human and animals are unnecessarily and inappropriately prescribed, leading to the emergence of drug resistance in bacteria (CDC, 2015). The CDC estimates that drug-resistant bacteria cause two million illnesses and approximately 23,000 deaths each year in the United States alone (2015).

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated the number of mortality caused by Multi-Drug Resistant Bacteria (MDRB) in the United States alone to be at 23,000 annually (CDC, 2017). As the number of cases increases, scientists are urged to reform a new tactic to tackle this challenge. A BBC article reports that scientists in the University of Western Australia were able to model a three-dimensional shape of the protein involved in bacterial resistance, in which may assist with the development of more effective treatments against multidrug resistant gram-negative bacteria (BBC News, 2017); link to the BBC article provided in the reference list. This

If one were still not convinced of the legitimacy of the issue, then perhaps a licensed doctor of over two decades could make things clear. Melissa Dennison agreed to an interview over drug resistant bacteria, and when asked of drug resistant bacteria, she said, “There is a huge increase in antibiotic resistant bacteria. This is a very serious problem.” With first-hand knowledge and experience dealing with sick children, Dr. Dennison has seen a shift in prescribing methods reflecting a growing consciousness of the overuse of antibacterial drugs. She stated in the interview that intelligent doctors know to use antibacterial drugs sparingly,

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).

In its most recent report, the World Economic Forum Global Risk committee listed antibiotic resistance as one of the greatest threats to human health. In the United State alone, is is estimated that over 2 million

Antibiotics are a term refers to substances produced by microorganisms that can harm and inhibit or destroy other microorganisms, specifically bacteria (15). Antibiotics can be produced naturally or unnaturally via pharmaceutical industries using large-scale processes of fermentation. The antibiotics discovery has been of great significance due to in many clinical settings the antibiotics generally are the best way to destroy bacteria which cause infections in humans and animals. In 1910, The Salvarsan use in the treatment of syphilis was the first application of antibiotics (15). In 1930, the antibiotics application was continued with sulphonamides. In addition, the first use of penicillin was in 1941 in the bacterial