The Increasing Resistance By Bacteria ( Bonheoffer Et Al, 1997 )

Another crucial element to consider is the emergence of bacterial strains resistant to antibiotics,given the widespread use of these drugs as a prophylactic or a therapeutic regimen.

The use of the healthcare system as a whole is largely determined by the cost incurred by the patient, as well as insurance companies within the healthcare system. As for combating the growth of antibiotic resistance, it might be beneficial to increase the cost of antibiotics so that they are used only when clinically appropriate. This, however, would lead to a decrease in access to patients who might actually need these forms of treatment and who are unable to afford them. Additionally, increasing the cost of treatment options may cause there to be a delay or abandonment of therapy. While neither of these options may be ideal to patients, and even the healthcare system as a whole, the consideration of their use may aid in lowering the prevalence of antibiotic resistance.

Since antibiotics, such as penicillin, became widely available in the 1940s, they have been called miracle drugs. They have been able to eliminate bacteria without significantly harming the other cells of the host. Now with each passing year, bacteria that are immune to antibiotics have become more and more common. This turn of events presents us with an alarming problem. Strains of bacteria that are resistant to all prescribed antibiotics are beginning to appear. As a result, diseases such as tuberculosis and penicillin-resistant gonorrhea are reemerging on a worldwide scale (1).

When an individual gets sick from a bacterial infection, antibiotics have undoubtedly changed the lives of many people by saving them from death (Davies, 2010). Since the discovery of antibiotics, scientists have been finding ways to improve the effectiveness of antibiotics. For the past decades, there’s been an alarming increase of antibiotic resistance globally (Witte, 2006). Antibiotics should ideally get rid of infectious diseases but instead the bacteria are finding ways to fight back. A bacterium that has persistently become more resistant to antibiotics is Staphylococcus aureus and is more deadly compared to other disease causing bacteria (Naber, 2009). S. aureus is often found in hospitals and infects patients most frequently partly due to the bacterium being found on one out of every two people (Bud, 2007 p. 118). This bring up the concern of bacterial resistance and the potency of antibiotics in the future. How will scientists, physicians, or patients fight off bacterial infections if the bacteria are becoming resilient against the medicine that should kill them? Even though bacteria are more resistant, antibiotics can still be effective towards the pathogenic bacteria. Penicillin has been noted as the one of the most significant finding in medical history (Bud, 2007 p. 1). Since it’s serendipitous discovery, penicillin is used to combat illnesses in patients in a quick and efficient

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

The misuse of antibiotics has the potential to set society back in time to the dark ages. It is time to end the careless use of these valuable antimicrobial that so many take for granted. Antibiotic resistance continues to expand and evolve and solutions to this epidemic need to implemented. By establishing stewardships, educational programs, and restrictions it teaches the severity of this issue and action that must be taken in order to decrease resistance. Antibiotic resistance is a multifactorial issue. Introducing preventative measures in hospitals will be most effective in reducing resistance, as well as eliminating the trend of misusing antibiotics.

However, microorganisms are now evolving and developing unprecedented resistance to penicillin and other once potent drugs, like

The evolution of resistance is clearly driven by the irrational use of antibiotics which threatens the

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a problem so serious that "it threatens the achievements of modern medicine",3 and has developed faster than new antimicrobial agents coming to the market despite preventive efforts such as prudent use of available antibiotics,5 exemplifying the urgent need for additional research in this field. Antimicrobial resistance is common among organisms responsible for widespread and life-threatening disorders such as sepsis, bacteremia, pneumonia, urinary tract infections, bone and respiratory disorders. Over the past few years, antimicrobial resistance has significantly increased among gram-negatives such as Escherichia coli6,7 (E. coli), Klebsiella pneumoniae8 (K. pneumoniae) and gram-positives such as Enterococcus

(3, 4, 6) The United States reports two million people infected with an antimicrobial resistant bacteria and out of two million individuals, 23,000 of those people die each year. (7) Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) is a reported nosocomial, antimicrobial resistant bacteria that infects 250,000 individuals each year. (7, 8) Out of the 250,000 individuals infected with Clostridium difficile (C. difficile), there is a recorded 14,000 deaths. (7, 8) Bacterial resistance is an emerging and ongoing public health threat that causes significantly higher rates of morbidity and mortality compared to antimicrobial-susceptible bacteria. (3, 4, 6) A key factor contributing to the rise in antimicrobial resistant bacteria is the significance of person-to-person or indirect contact, which coherently passes resistant strains of bacteria. (8) The effectiveness and informal access of antibiotics in the 20th century has led to overuse and the emergence of antimicrobial resistant bacteria. (3)

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).

Since the beginning of the antibiotic error in the mid 20th century, antimicrobial resistance has been recognized. The increased use of antimicrobial agents in the recent years has resulted in the development of resistance to these drugs. Clinical threats have however been minimized by the availability of newer agents (Bonomo & Tolmasky 2007). The World Health Organization (WHO) defines antimicrobial resistance as the resistance of a microorganism to an antimicrobial medicine to which it was previously sensitive (WHO 2012). A variety of resistance mechanisms have been developed by bacteria to counter the introduction of successive classes of antibiotics. This has lead to heightened interest in the study of antimicrobial

The article ‘Antibiotic Resistance’ is written by Holden Wright. Holden Wright has a degree in Pharmacology and is currently working in the Pathology Department at St. Thomas Hospital.

As humans have evolved over time, so too have bacteria, which has led bacteria over the years to develop some resistances to our current arsenal of antibiotics. Doctors have begun to see bacteria that are resistant to our entire realm of antibiotics, which would effectively render them untreatable (Baggaley, 2017). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced in January that one such bacteria contributed to the of death of a woman last September from Washoe County, Nevada (Chen et al., 2017). Keeve Nachman, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore says they are coming across ever-increasing numbers drug-resistant bugs (Baggaley, 2017). This is an alarming trend to say the least, many doctors around the world are calling for direct action on it. Drs. Simon Prasad and Phillippa Smith from the Office of the Chief Scientist in Australia issued a dire warning that we’re on the verge of entering the “post-antibiotics era” (Prasad & Smith, 2014). They fear even the most common infection