how are we fighting antibiotic resistant bacteria and what will we do when our antibiotics will no longer have effect?
In: 139
You fight antibiotic resistant bacteria with more antibiotics.
Theres well over 100 antibiotics that are readily available. Beyond that there are reserve antibiotics. Their side effects are worse than regular antibiotics‘ so they are only used when regular ones fail.
Also new antibiotics can and are found. Cells are really complex chemical machines and there‘s a massive amount of ways to disturb that. For an antibiotic you need to find a chemical that disturbs some function of the bacterium to a point that it can no longer reproduce. The chalanging part is finding something that also doesn‘t hurt human cells. If bacteria become resistant to more and more antobiotics new ones will be found.
And even if no new safe antibiotics are found there is also phagptherapy. Bacteriophages are viruses that specifically attack certain bacteria and completely ignore human cells. By infecting a human with those you can treat a bacterial infections. Antibiotics are widely considered safer, and combined with their variety and availability explains why we use them more often than phagotherapy
Latest Answers