Antimicrobial Research Paper

With all of our modern advances, it seems somewhat strange that chronic health problems have become so commonplace. When antibiotics were discovered, they predicted the end of disease. Instead, we now have a world full of frightening antibiotic resistant infections.

When penicillin was released to the public in 1944, it was a miracle drug. Infections that had been killers were suddenly treatable. Doctors recommended it generously, both for illnesses that needed it and illnesses that didn’t. Before long, however, it took much stronger doses to see penicillin’s effects. When the antibiotic arms race began in 1944, most physicians assumed that new antibiotics would be discovered or created to keep up with the evolving resistance in bacteria, but the bacteria are constantly evolving new defenses and doctors are starting to run low on antibiotic ammunition. MRSA, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, is one of many types of bacteria

However, the scene is changing dramatically once again, and not in our favor. Antibiotic resistant bacteria

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.)

The problem is that antibiotics resistance has become a very big problem in todays society. Antibiotics are no longer effective against certain super-bugs such as MRSA.

Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria changes and reduces the effectiveness of an antibiotic. Using the wrong antibiotic for disease-causing bacteria can end in an overuse of that antibiotic and promotes antibiotic-resistance. Information gathered by the Bash the Bug Project can be used to find the correct antibiotic to fight certain disease-causing bacteria. Therefore, limiting bacteria’s opportunity to develop antibiotic-resistance. This is important to the general public because antibiotic-resistant bacterium is more difficult to kill, requires a more expensive treatment, and is given more of an opportunity to spread. While antibiotic resistance cannot be completely stopped, prescribing the correct antibiotic can greatly slow the spread of antibiotic resistance infections. The Bash the Bug project will then allow more time for newer drugs that can fight antibiotic resistant bacteria that are already in

According to previous, excessive use of antibiotics is one of the causes of drug resistance in different pathogens, this concern has caused many hospitals around the world develop guidelines and strategies to use appropriate antibiotics and are committed themselves to

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), “Antibiotic resistance is the ability of microbes to resist the effects of drugs – that is, the germs are not killed, and their growth is not stopped. Although some people are at greater risk than others, no one can completely avoid the risk of antibiotic-resistant infections” (“About Antimicrobial Resistance”). Antibiotic resistance has a higher chance of occurring with the more antibiotics taken, as the body adapts more and more each time. The CDC has collected data across the country, and has concluded that the estimated number of deaths caused by antibiotic resistance is 23,000, and that the number of illnesses is slightly higher than 2 million (“About Antimicrobial Resistance”). Already antibiotic resistance has affected millions of lives, and will continue to affect many more until antibiotic overuse is stopped

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.

One imminent problem that I don’t believe gets enough attention is the rise of antimicrobial resistance, or in other words, the formation of superbugs. For the purposes of this oh-so exceptional prompt, I’ll imagine there’s an epidemic sweeping across the United States, and to make things even worse, it has a 100% mortality rate.

The increased population of the world along with availability of global transport means resulted in the advancement of critical health situations that the current treatments cannot manage efficiently (Abdulamir 1). The World Economic Forum (WEF) concludes that, “We live in a bacterial world where we will never be able to stay ahead of the mutation curve. A test of our resilience is how far behind the curve we allow ourselves to fall” (Spellberg, et al.). Antibiotic resistance is truly driven by microbial exposure to all antibiotics whether they are appropriately prescribed or not (Spellberg, et al.). For example, antibiotic resistance was recently discovered among bacteria found in underground caves that had been isolated from the planet’s surface for four million years and was even found in synthetic antibiotics that were nonexistent on earth until the 20th century (Spellberg, et al.). As the cave example shows, antibiotic-resistant infections would prevail even if all antibiotic use was restricted and appropriate, so just restricting prescriptions alone will not suffice. Any more of the typical antibiotics found and even the new antimicrobials currently helping will not effectively fight resistance, for they will eventually be overpowered by the growth of resistance (Roemhild, et al. 945). By considering the evolution

Dr. Marc Sprenger directs the WHO antimicrobial resistance secretariat, and he said in a recent press conference that untreatable infections are manifesting as a result of antimicrobial resistance and thereby posing a significant threat to public health worldwide. He added that misuse and

Respiratory infections are one of the leading causes of death worldwide (Ferkol and Schraufnagel, 2014). Each year, more than three million children under 5 years of age die from pneumonia and lower respiratory tract infections and in 2015, tuberculosis killed 1.5 million people (Wardlaw, 2006; WHO, 2016). The emergence and spread of antibiotic-resistant respiratory tract pathogens have aggravated the current situation by limiting the treatment options (Zumla et al., 2014). A recent report stated that in the USA in 2013, at least 2 million illnesses and 23,000 deaths were caused by antibiotic-resistance infections (CDC, 2013). The emergence of antibiotic-resistance is related to the overuse and misuse of antibiotics (Ventola, 2015).

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).

According the World Health Organization (WHO), antibiotic resistance is one of the world’s greatest health threats to date (Haddox, 2013). In the article, The Health Threat of Antibiotic Resistance, Gail Haddox (2013) discusses the danger antibiotic resistance poses in today’s society and strategies to prevent the expansion of antibiotic resistance. In Europe alone, an estimated 25,000 deaths have been attributed to multi-resistant infections (Haddox, 2013). Common infections are now harder to treat due to the increased resistance to antibiotics across the world, in fact some are becoming untreatable. Antibiotics should be treated like oil, a non-renewable resource (Haddox, 2013).