The Problem of Antibiotic Resistance

The outlook on antibiotics has changed dermadicly since we have fist started using them. Antibiotics is a substance that is produced by a microorganism that can kill or prevent the growth of another microorganism. The major conflict that will be covered in the paper is antibiotic resistance. Antibiotics resistance

The development of antibiotics was an important advancement in 20th century medicine. Previously deadly infectious diseases are now routinely treated with antibiotics. Moreover, for modern-day medical procedures such as chemotherapy treatment to be successful, antibiotic use is necessary. For these reasons, the prospect of bacteria developing widespread resistance to antibiotics is a major concern as it would render many modern-day medical therapies unviable.

Modern-day advances have allowed scientists to develop methods to control pathogens. The more common methods include the use of antiseptics, antibiotics, and vaccines. By definition, antiseptics are chemicals used to kill pathogens. A few widespread antiseptics include soap, vinegar, and rubbing alcohol. Antiseptics are primarily used for the external destruction of pathogens, while antibiotics and vaccines target internal pathogens. Nevertheless, there are and can be difficulties concerning the use of antibiotics. “As antibiotic use has become more common, antibiotic-resistant bacteria have evolved.” This resistance due to evolution is called antibiotic resistance. It results in the antibiotics having no effect whatsoever on the bacteria, rendering the antibiotics useless. When antibiotic resistance occurs, scientists must resume their search to create a new medicine to can kill the mutant bacteria.

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

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 seems that human can start to overcome most of diseases by using antibiotics without any bad influence. But as time goes by, the side effects show up. The excessive use of antibiotics brings the disadvantages and problems with the heaps of advantages simultaneously. Antibiotics are not only exacerbating the health risk of animals, and human beings, but also exacerbating the environmental impairment. The antibiotics are used to treat and prevent diseases in human beings and animals’ medicine, but there are many kinds of risks deriving from the antibiotics therapies, which include the development and spread of resistant bacteria strains and environmental contamination; besides, the micro-biotic organism is also a big issue we need to concern about.

There is an extreme amount of waste created by raising so many animals in one place which then the surrounding land, air, and water becomes contaminated/ polluted by waste run-off. Even the residents of communities around factory farms reported many accounts of illnesses, and property values were lowered by their proximity to these farms. In an effort to try and counteract the health challenges brought up by the unsanitary, stressful, and overcrowded living conditions, antibiotics were used frequently, which can then create a drug-resistant bacteria and further puts human health at risk. Close to 75% of the antibiotics given to farm animals ends up undigested in their urine and manure. Through this waste, the antibiotics contaminate crops and waterways thus affecting human health.

Since the discovery of antibiotics in the 20th century its use has widely prevailed. While its introduction to the medicine industry has brought many benefits like almost eradicating some diseases, its use is now bringing concern to public health. Antibiotics are excessively being used that the possibility of antibiotic resistant bacteria is a major risk. One huge source of antibiotic consumption comes from the agricultural business. Livestock like swine and poultry are fed subtherapeutic antibiotics as

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).

Antibiotics are chemical substances that can kill or inhibit the growth of infectious microorganism. They could be naturally occurring or synthetic in a laboratory. Each type of infection has its therapeutic course duration which should be completed neither reduced nor overused. The long term use of antibiotics may harm the host. In addition to the impact of antibiotic on infectious organism, they can affect the non-infectious bacteria. These effect on non-infectious bacteria depend on the type of used antibiotic, its mechanism of action and resistance level among community. Different antibiotics affect the normal gut bacteria in diverse ways depending on several the antibiotic spectrum of activity, dose and duration of therapeutic course, administration route and characteristics of the

In the recent years there is a great concern about the problem of antimicrobial resistance either in animal or in human medicine that is associated with failures in the treatment of infectious disease. The high use of antimicrobial agents in animal and in human is probably the main cause of this condition (Auther et al., 2006)

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).

Dolliver et al. (2007) investigated the effect of antibiotic usage on concentration of antibiotics due to manure use in the soil. Many farmers will add manure to their soils; in order to add nutrients to their crops. The farmer may not be aware that when they are adding the manure they may also be adding antibiotics. Sulfamethazine, a very important antibiotics used in livestock production, is given to the livestock and they release the antibiotics in their feces. In 2001, 400 tons of sulfamethazine were added to livestock yearly. In their experiment they focused on three main food crops; corn, lettuce, and potato. They wanted to know if the plant would uptake the antibiotics in they were grown in soil where the antibiotic was found. If the plant did uptake the antibiotics; it could lead to antibiotic resistance bacteria to be found in the plants. Followed by; an increase amount of antibiotic resistance bacteria consumed by humans and other animals.

Antibiotics are the most successful drugs used for the human treatment and they have proved as a very effective weapon against infections, but they are considered as important pollutants also. Antibiotic pollution is increasingly being accepted as a promoter of antibiotic resistance that may include over-prescription and mishandling of antibiotics. Researchers have found out this fact that when an antibiotic is consumed; up to 90 percent passes through a body without taking part in metabolism. Antibiotics are used broadly in human and veterinary drugs, as well as, in aquaculture to check or treat microbial infections. In addition being used for human treatment, antibiotics are widely used for animal farming and for rural purposes. Residues from human environments and from farms may contain antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes that can pollute accepted environments. The clearest outcome of antibiotic release in usual environments is the selection of resistant bacteria. The identical resistance genes found at clinical settings are at this time distributed among pristine ecosystems without any record of antibiotic contamination Antibiotics can go through the atmosphere by way of waste water treatment plant effluents, hospital waste processing plant effluents, farming waste, and outflow from waste-storage and landfills. Pollution from total municipal sewage may be correlated to the rise in bacteria resistant to the most powerful antibiotics. Water discharged into lakes

Less than 1% of bacteria can invade our bodies and making us ill [5]. Such bacteria are pathogenic and have the potential to be disease causing. This means that the remaining 99% are rather ubiquitous in nature and serve beneficial purposes or have no effect on humans. Pathogens vary in complexity and those that remain are a direct result of successfully adapting to their environments and evolving over time to overcome selective evolutionary pressures. A more specific example of how disease causing pathogens can vary in virulence involves the mention of antibiotics and their ability throughout history to temporary lessening the virulence of bacterial strains. The relationship