by Triana Rathads

Created on: April 03, 2009

Antibiotics are important chemical products used for treating bacterial infections, they usually work through damaging the bacteria in a manor specific for each type of antibiotic, and for example Ampicillin is an antibiotic which acts by preventing bacterial cell wall synthesis, which stops bacterial growth. Antibiotics are usually only prescribed by doctors when a person's body is struggling to eliminate an infection, and when a bacterial infection is believed to cause a life-threatening infectious disease. Antibiotics can be harmful if they are not used correctly. You should be aware of the reasons we take antibiotics, and the effects they can have on us.

Antibiotics will not work against viral infections, because they are used to treat infections caused by bacteria, fungus and some parasite infections. Fungi and parasites have a closer genetic make up to us than bacteria, this is why these types of drugs can have a higher level of risk of damage to our body, but in many fungal and parasite infections, the benefits out way the risks. The way scientists tackle this problem is to create a chemical which will attack something which is not part of the human cells, for example many anti-fungal drugs target the chitin in the fungal cell wall.

Viruses cause colds, the flu and most coughs and sore throats, and these can not be cured with antibiotics, although some long lasting coughs can be caused by an opportunistic bacterial infection, following a viral infection, this can be treated with antibiotics if diagnosed by your doctor. There are other examples where a similar symptom can be caused by both a viral and a bacterial infection, such as a sore throat in a cold is viral, but step throat is bacterial, and requires antibiotics. Ear infections can be dangerous, and antibiotics can not always be used to treat them, you should always visit your doctor if you are worried about an ear or sinus infection.

You need to take every last pill, and every last spoonful of your antibiotics, and you need to take them as regularly as you are told to. I understand that people worry about medicine, and they want to reduce the amount of possible damage an antibiotic could be doing to them, especially once they feel well again, but it is far more important that every last one of those bacterial cells are killed. If you miss one, and it survives in your body's diminished levels of the antibiotic, it could create a new resistant strain of bacteria. This could be very damaging to you, as it remains in your body, but also a higher risk to others that you could spread it to, especially those close to you.

Antibiotic resistance is a real problem, bacteria are evolving to resist antibiotics much faster than we can produce new ones, and our original pool of antibiotic resources is getting smaller. The amount of funding for antibiotic research is also declining, as companies do not want the risk of spending huge amounts of money developing an antibiotic, only for it to become useless a few years down the line. I simple way we can all help is to take our antibiotics responsibly, and only take them when we truly need them.

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