Microbial Growth

Antibiotics, composed of microorganisms such as streptomycin and penicillin, kill other infectious microorganisms in the human body. At one point, antibiotics were considered to have “basically wiped out infection in the United States”, but due to their overuse and evolutionary

Things that are used commonly by students and staff should be routinely disinfected to ensure the health and safety of the people using the provided materials. Bacteria is related to disease (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1885) Previous studies on the surface of a high school telephone showed that the phones had an uncountable number of bacteria colonies (Yalowitz, 2003). We know that surfaces used by the public often become contaminated because of the bacteria on peoples hands. A study on the bacteria on peoples hands showed that 28% of people have fecal matter on their hands (Judah, 2010). A study done on the contamination on public doorknobs showed that over 86.7% were contaminated (Nworie, 2012). This experiment was to show us how much bacteria is on the surface of the things we use

Hand washing is said to be one of the best ways to prevent the spread of bacteria. Hand sanitizers are made up from an alcohol based compound that prevents the spread of bacteria. In addition, we clean surfaces with wipes that disinfect and or soapy water (cutting boards especially). Us, humans, also take several antibiotics if ill with any type of infection. We also wash ourselves and even food to get rid of the bacteria.

When you hear the word antibiotic, what do you think? It’s what all the doctors give us, so it has to be safe, right? What if I were to tell you that antibiotics could be the reason for more sickness, would you believe me? No, antibiotics themselves are not making us sick, their effect on bacteria and disease is what is. Antibiotics are used to cure disease, control symptoms, and prevent anything from happening in the first place. But, in the agricultural society, antibiotics are often used to get quicker growth and more efficient weight gain of their livestock. This is where the antibiotic controversy stems from. Some feel that antibiotic use in food animals is a major cause for antibiotic resistance, and should there for stop being used for unnecessary purposes. Whereas the other end, more neutral side, claims that regulated necessary antibiotics must be used to ensure the health of the animals and consumers.

Possible solutions for resistance in the future are to find new antibiotics in niches besides soil, such as the marine environment as globalization and deforestation make new soil discoveries harder each day. Educating people about resistance to prevent misuse is important as well because not everybody knows about the growing resistance problem. If people know about the resistance problem, proper use of antibiotics would increase. Antibiotics today are easily accessible without the need of prescription in most cases, leading to the wrong self-diagnosis based on observation instead of actual tests. Creating more regulations to ensure prescriptions and correct diagnosis will help with the misuse of antibiotics. Stopping their use as growth hormones in agriculture will also help because the antibiotics from the plants and animals are able to unnecessarily get into a person’s body, which promotes more antibiotic resistance since the dosages are not consistent. As the antibiotics pass through the livestock and people, they contaminate the water system. The antibiotic resistance today does not necessarily mean the end of antibiotics as long as

It is hard for us to imagine living a country before modern medicine. Just over one hundred years ago, nearly nine out of every 1,000 women who gave birth died from complications, roughly 40 percent from bacterial infections (CDC, 1999). In some U.S. cities and townships as many as 30 percent of infants passed away before they could celebrate their first birthday (Ibid). About one in every nine individuals who contracted a serious skin infection ended up being killed by it, even from something as trivial as an abrasion or a bug bite (Ibid). Pneumonia killed 30 percent of those who came down with it; and meningitis had a kill rate of 70 percent (Editorial Board, 2014). Surgical procedures were shoddy and often resulted in mortality due to bacterial infection (Ibid). However, the landscape was dramatically changed by the development and implementation of a few major medical breakthroughs: improvements in public health, vaccines, and antibiotics (PCAST, 2014). Over the past hundred years, deaths from infectious diseases declined incredibly and contributed to a substantial increase in life expectancy. Antibiotics, especially, have preserved millions upon millions of lives (Ibid).

The purpose of this lab was to observe the locations of bacteria growing in our school. I hypothesized that there would be more bacteria growing in areas with more exposure to students. My hypothesis was refuted. By the end of the growing period, the quadrant with the swab from the arm of the union bench had one colony, the quadrant with the swab from the girls’ locker room floor had 225 colonies, the quadrant with the swab from a soap dispenser had no colonies, and the quadrant with the swab from inside a toilet bowl had six colonies. This means that exposure to students was not the factor in determining the amount of bacterial growth, because the arm of the union bench has more exposure to students than the inside of a toilet bowl, and because

Figure 2 represents the agar plates after E. coli bacterial growth. Agar plate (top left) labeled “-DNA” did not contain any bacterial cells with plasmid DNA ,and had cell growth in the form of a lawn. The “-DNA/+AMP”

Although the connotation surrounding bacterial infections induces little concern to everyday western people compared to cancer or heart disease, the reality of the matter is that antibiotic resistant bacterial infections have the potential to kill over 10 million people globally each year by 2050 (Walsh). These 10 million people will be a part of the most expansive health crisis in recorded history, but what is it that makes these afflictions so deadly? The complications that come from bacterial infections can be horrendous when left untreated and when the infection stems from an antibiotic resistant bacteria, treatment can be extremely difficult. Sepsis, an infection of the bloodstream, is the primary complication that causes death within patients suffering from bacterial infections. It often results in multiple organ failure, killing the patient effectively and in significant pain (CDC). In certain cases of sepsis and infections of specific organs, last resort antibiotics may

First words, play dates, and ear infections. These are things that many children go through on their journey to adulthood. Many infections nowadays sound trivial, but 75 years ago, they were fatal. Antibiotics are antimicrobial drugs used in the treatment of bacterial infections. They kill microorganisms responsible for infection by means of targeting structures or inhibiting processes that bacterial cells have, but human cells do not. But recently, selection by antibiotics for resistant adaptations, made possible by bacteria’s rapid rate of reproduction, has become a severe threat. Each course of amoxicillin, ciprofloxacin, or tetracycline kills all the bacteria except for those that are resistant to it, leaving ample space and resources in

Overtime, antibiotics have been favorable as well as negligent to society. Antibiotic usage is helpful to society because it kills and fights off bacteria in both humans and animals. With an increase in antibiotic usage, these bacteria have become resistant to certain drugs which reduce the chance of the bacteria being killed off and result in bacteria multiplying, causing increased harm to the infected. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2013), each year in the United States at least 2 million people become infected with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics and at least 23,000 people die each year as a result to these infections. Although multiple bacteria are antibiotic resistant, and those numbers will continue to rise, antibiotics should remain a staple in the treatment of diseases, as opposed to abandoning their use which will cause an increase in the prevalence of bacterial infections.

The world has seen many changes throughout its time. From the dinosaurs, to people habiting earth, the population growing rapidly, and the invention of medicine, the earth has gone through a lot. Civilization has always found ways to survive, natural disasters, plagues, wars, and attacks. Somehow the human race has always come out on top. A great, eye opening discovery for the world has been antibiotics. With these new found drugs the population has been able to survive sicknesses and live decades longer, than the ones that came before. Imagine dying from a simple cold because of no medicine. Only with all great things, there is always the negative. Society seems to rely on the fast and easy way out, and that is what antibiotics allow. Unfortunately,

This experiment is about bacterial growth. We will demonstrate a bacterial growth curve using a closed system. Bacterial growth usually takes up to 12-24 hours to get an accurate result so we will be monitoring this growth between two classes. We also used different methods to determine bacterial growth as well as a few different calculations. One way of receiving data is by using a spectrophotometer where we will record the absorption at a given time to create the bacterial growth curve. We also used the plate count method after performing a serial dilution to calculate the actual cell density at different times given. By using this method we can count the population number of the same given and see the maximum cell density

As a child, many people can recall fights with their parents when having to take medicine or antibiotics. The struggling and crying became a routine soon enough, before the child’s health renewed, and all became well again until the next illness. Children usually hate antibiotics for a very good reason, though. The thick texture of the liquid form, the large pills that left a bad taste in one’s mouth if they took too long to swallow, the suffocating and slimy feeling of ointments and creams against the skin. Everyone’s experienced this before. However, taking antibiotics is not only unpleasant, but it’s also a risky business within a person’s body. Too little or too much of an antibiotic can have negative results. One of these results is the emergence of a bacteria line that almost seems like something out of a horror movie. Mutated strains called superbugs have already begun to leave their mark on the world. A nightmare indeed. Superbugs have become a massive problem that needs to be stopped with a stronger line of antibiotics, ones that researchers have only just now figured out how to create.

Antibiotics are the key drugs for treatment of infections and are among the most commonly prescribed drugs in Pediatrics department. Their indiscriminate use increases the risk of bacterial drug resistance and thus has prompted the need to use antibiotics judiciously in pediatric practice [1]. The prescribing pattern deals with monitoring, evaluating and suggesting modifications in the prescribing pattern, so as to make patient care safe, effective and cost effective [2]. Antibiotics are commonly prescribed to treat various infectious conditions. Several studies reported that 50% to 85% of children receive antibiotics in developed and developing countries. Rational antibiotic prescription is very important to avoid multiple drug resistance,