Contributed by Richard Parilla
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXisYehVXUk
In 1928 a discovery made by Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming would change modern medicine. Fleming observed that the fungus Penicillium was able to kill disease causing pathogens. This discovery won Fleming a Nobel Prize in 1945 and led to development of antibiotics. The effectiveness of these drugs, once referred to as “miracle drugs”, led them to become used very regularly to treat a variety of illnesses. However, these lifesaving antibiotics have become far less effective due to the increasingly more common bacterial strains that are antibiotic resistant.
Antibiotics function by either directly killing bacteria themselves or by inhibiting their growth and reproduction. So how does bacterial strains resistance to certain antibiotics come about? Well an easy way to think about this is in evolutionary terms. The use of antibiotics selects for bacterial strains that are resistant to the mechanism by which the antibiotic targets the pathogen. Since all the non-resistant bacteria are wiped out by the antibiotic, only the resistant bacteria can reproduce and spread. This is an interesting perspective since it shows that humans can have an impact on the evolution of a species through implementation of novel selective pressures such as antibiotics.
Over the past decade antibiotic resistance has become a very threatening problem to society. It is has been a topic which has continually made headlines over the past few years. Why has the threat of antibiotic resistant microbes risen? The World Health Organization points to the misuse of antibiotics and over prescription as the cause of the accelerated emergence of the resistant bacteria strains. Due to the nature of this problem it would seem that it will be a frequent topic of discussion in the near future.
For Further Further Reading:
“Antimicrobial Resistance.” WHO. N.p., May 2013. Web. 20 Apr. 2014.
Austin, D. J. “The Relationship between the Volume of Antimicrobial Consumption in Human Communities and the Frequency of Resistance.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 96.3 (1999): 1152-156. Print.
Bonhoeffer, S. “Evaluating Treatment Protocols to Prevent Antibiotic Resistance.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 94.22 (1997): 12106-2111. Print.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 16 Sept. 2013. Web. 20 Apr. 2014.
“General Background: About Antibiotic Resistance.” Tufts University. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2014.
Hampton, L. M., M. M. Farley, W. Schaffner, A. Thomas, A. Reingold, L. H. Harrison, R. Lynfield, N. M. Bennett, S. Petit, K. Gershman, J. Baumbach, B. Beall, J. Jorgensen, A. Glennen, E. R. Zell, and M. Moore. “Prevention of Antibiotic-Nonsusceptible Streptococcus Pneumoniae With Conjugate Vaccines.”Journal of Infectious Diseases 205.3 (2012): 401-11. Print.
Levy, Stuart B. “The Challenge of Antibiotic Resistance.” Diss. Texas U, 1998. Web.
Lupo, Agnese, Sébastien Coyne, and Thomas Ulrich Berendonk. “Origin and Evolution of Antibiotic Resistance: The Common Mechanisms of Emergence and Spread in Water Bodies.” Frontiers in Microbiology 3 (2012): n. pag. Print.
Stöppler, Melissa C., M.D. “Antibiotics 101 – MedicineNet.com.” MedicineNet. N.p., 3 Sept. 2012. Web. 20 Apr. 2014.
Woodford, Neil, Jane F. Turton, and David M. Livermore. “Multiresistant Gram-negative Bacteria: The Role of High-risk Clones in the Dissemination of Antibiotic Resistance.” FEMS Microbiology Reviews 35.5 (2011): 736-55. Print.