My understanding is that the antibiotics won’t kill the random mutant bacteria anyway, so doesn’t killing off all the susceptible ones just allow for more room for the mutants?
Does it have to do with more base bacteria getting the chance to mutate? A specific resistance has to be pretty rare right? Or will you have multiples of the same mutation in a “colony”?
In: Biology
For your antibiotic a population of bacteria will have varying degrees of resistance. When you start taking the antibiotics the ones with susceptibility to the antibiotic will die first and the more resistant ones will last longer. The full course of antibiotics is designed to last long enough that, when combined with your immune system, all of the bad bacteria will be dead.
If you stop before the full course is done then you may have a small amount of the most resistant bacteria left. Maybe your immune system manages to clear them up in a few days but in that time you pass them to someone else. Now they have bacteria that is extra strong. If you repeat this resistance increasing process a bunch of times you end up with bacteria that are the best of the best of the best at resisting antibiotics and that’s a problem.
There are solutions for the super bugs but if we could not have them in the first place that would be better.
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