Symptoms And Treatments Of Antibiotics

In the last decade, the number of prescriptions for antibiotics has increases. Even though, antibiotics are helpful, an excess amount of antibiotics can be dangerous. Quite often antibiotics are wrongly prescribed to cure viruses when they are meant to target bacteria. Antibiotics are a type of medicine that is prone to kill microorganisms, or bacteria. By examining the PBS documentary Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria and the article “U.S. government taps GlaxoSmithKline for New Antibiotics” by Ben Hirschler as well as a few other articles can help depict the problem that is of doctors prescribing antibiotics wrongly or excessively, which can led to becoming harmful to the body.

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

A couple times a year local and national mass media put the spotlight on problems connected to antibiotic overuse. Some people consider those problems to be real and serious, and others think that the discussed topics are nothing more than new “fashionable” subjects to talk about, distracting people from “real” problems, such as climbing gas prices or war expenses. Meanwhile, antibiotic overuse continues as a common practice among US doctors and agribusinesses for the last 20 years. The practice of antibiotic overuse has put patient’s health at risk, contributed to antibiotic resistance and increased bacterial mutation to a new, stronger level; as well as it hitting the economy with new costly expenses in health care. It is time to stop

Antibiotics are inarguably one of the greatest advances in medical science of the past century. Although the first natural antibiotic Penicillin was not discovered until 1928 by Scottish biologist Alexander Flemming, evidence exists that certain plant and mold growths were used to treat infections in ancient Egypt, ancient India, and classical Greece (Forrest, 1982). In our modern world with the advent of synthetic chemistry synthetic antibiotics like Erithromycin and its derivative Azithromycin have been developed. Antibiotics have many uses including the treatment of bacterial and protozoan infection, in surgical operations and prophylactically to prevent the development of an infection. Through these applications, antibiotics have saved countless lives across the world and radically altered the field of medicine. Though a wonderful and potentially lifesaving tool, antibiotic use is not without its disadvantages. Mankind has perhaps been too lax in regulation and too liberal in application of antibiotics and growing antibiotic resistance is the price we must now pay. A recent study showed that perhaps 70% of bacterial infections acquired during hospital visits in the United States are resistant to at least one class of antibiotic (Leeb, 2004). Bacteria are not helpless and their genetic capabilities have allowed them to take advantage of society’s overuse of antibiotics, allowing them to develop

Section 3 of the Promise for Antibiotics and Therapeutics for Health Act or the PATH Act, which call for current PATH Act legislation to be modified so that it “will allow health experts to more easily develop new treatments for antibiotic resistant bacteria, and make real progress in presenting a great number of illnesses and deaths in the United States”1. In addition, this new legislation will impact Section 506 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C 356) by introducing into its current language a new subsection (g) “Limited Population Pathway for Antibacterial Drugs”. Thus creating new avenues for the introduction of alternative treatments for limited populations based on the recommendation of Secretary

Resistance among bacteria to current antibiotics may cause a new pre-antibiotic era, where common bacterial infections become as lethal as before the invention of the first antibiotic penicillin. With resistance on the rise, ‘simple’ surgery, cancer treatment and organ transplantation may become impossible.[4] Despite this very big and real threat[1], big pharmaceutical companies have abandoned or decreased their efforts to develop new antibiotics, while the demand for new and broad –and small– spectrum antibiotics is increasing.[2] [3] In this paper I will give an outline of the main factors why big pharmaceutical companies are no longer developing new antibiotics and I will attempt to pose possible solutions –call it Utopian solutions– that may turn the tide before it is too late.

Antibiotics-resistant organisms have become one of the most serious threats to public health, infecting over two million people and killing approximately 23,000 people annually.1 According to the CDC, “total inappropriate antibiotic use,” such as prescribing unnecessary antibiotics or giving the wrong dose or duration, makes up to 50% of all outpatient antibiotic use,2,3 and in 2009, the United States spent $10.7 billion on antibiotics, indicating that there is a lot of potential money to save.4

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.

In the U.S. alone, the amount of prescribed courses of antibiotics per year far exceeds the the population, indicating that some people are getting more than one course of antibiotic treatment per year. In relation to that, the treatment indication and duration of antibiotic therapy has been found to be incorrect in 30% to 50% of cases studied and 30% to 60% of patients in intensive care units were found to be given unnecessary or inappropriate antibiotic treatment (Ventola, 2015). Another subject of concern is the lack of regulation in other countries. Many are able to purchase antibiotics without a prescription which leads to cheap and easy access, eventually encouraging misuse of the drug. Also, these same countries are able to sell antibiotics online where people residing in regulated countries are able to purchase them, contributing to the problem even further (Ventola, 2015). The lack of education and concern for the regulation of antibiotics can have dire consequences not only for patients but for the rest of the population, as

It has been thirty years since the last antibiotic was discovered in 1987. This is huge problem when tackling antibiotic resistance. Continually developing new drugs for a new strain of antibiotic resistance is not what will solve the problem in the long run, this comes from preventing the bacteria from mutating and becoming resistant so rapidly. However, in the short term, for the bacteria that are now resistant to the antibiotics we already have, we need a new type of antibiotic that kill be effective in killing these bacteria.

Infection is a major cause of human suffering. Even relatively minor infections can become more serious, leading to major infection and can, in some cases, lead to patient death. In addition to patient suffering, infection causes distress to family and friends.The costs to the health care system of providing care for those with infections are huge. In addition to concerns over the growing costs to health care, the use of antibiotics to treat these infections is thought to

In the end, the hospital will probably never see the complete eradication of the superbug from it (Vastag, 2012). Antibiotic resistance is also tacking on an additional “$20 billion in excess direct health care costs” and contributing $35 billion to costs from lost productivity (CDC, 2013), evidence that it is taking an increasing toll on successfully treating patients and getting them back on their feet without undue delay.

Take for example MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), a S. aureus strain that was discovered in 1961 to be resistant to the antibiotic methicillin. Webmd indicates that MRSA has now grown its resistance from methicillin to “amoxicillin, penicillin, oxacillin and many other common antibiotics” (MRSA). This increase in resistance of a methicillin-resistant strain of S. aureus can be attributed to the increasing use and overuse of antibiotics, not only in the doctor’s office but also in agriculture. MRSA is only one of many antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria. New resistant strains are evolving rapidly. According to Dr. Ed Warren, “there are high levels of antibiotic resistance in bacteria causing common infections (e.g. urinary tract infections, pneumonia, bloodstream infections) in all regions of the world” (21).

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).

The antibiotic resistance crisis will cause a lot of issues with human development and the health of humanity, to where 80,000 people can die from a single antimicrobial resistance outbreak (3). The reason why this crisis is a