Many people have died from antibiotic resistance. Mainly because of the overuse or misuse of antibiotics over the years. Our society is alarmed by this crisis.
According to the CDC more than 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections occur in the U.S. each year, resulting in about 35,000 deaths.
What is Antibiotic resistance?
- It happens when your medicine or drug can’t fight the bacteria or germs within your body.
- It hinders the treatment of infections in our bodies. This causes our bodies to feel weak rather than being well.
The causes of antibiotic resistance:
- Antibiotics are getting misuse and overuse.
- Poor healthcare services.
- Limited access to immediate and adequate disease treatments.
- Poor sanitation and hygiene.
How does antibiotic resistance develop?
- Antibiotics are mainly used to help our sick body fight bacterial infections.
- Some of these bacterias inside our body are good at defending themselves making it hard to kill, as they gain a mutation. This is what we now call antibiotic resistance.
- The antibiotic resistance can pass to new bacteria as the bacteria multiply and can transfer to other bacteria through horizontal gene transfer.
How to slow down antibiotic resistance?
- Use antibiotics only when prescribed by doctors: and only when you have a bacterial infection and not for the common cold or any other viral infection.
- If you are on antibiotics, complete the entire course of antibiotics prescribed by your doctor.
- Never use or share leftover antibiotics. Do not self medicate.
- Prepare healthy and clean food.
- Observe proper hygiene. For example, you should wash your hands properly.
Anyone can get infected with antibiotic resistance regardless of age. Infections that are caused by these germs are very difficult and almost impossible to treat. While antibiotics are valuable because they let us cure untreatable diseases, as time went on, we forgot how to use them properly, reducing their effectiveness. We must always use antibiotics wisely for them to be effective.
If you’re interested in learning more, the CDC goes into more detail about how the mechanisms of antibiotic resistance happens: Click here
The CDC website above also has a few downloadable PDFs with great information. I’m putting my favorite one here, but check out the page above for more!
How Antibiotic Resistance Moves Directly Germ to Germ
Video on Antibiotic Resistance:
Learning Biology with Dr. Vanessa, LLC 