• Question: I've heard things about an upcoming 'antibiotic crisis' regarding the dangerous bacteria being resistant to antibiotics. Is this true?

    Asked by VFLinden to Daniela ?, ☣ Danna, Jonny, Juan, Lindsay on 10 Jun 2016. This question was also asked by Dalj.
    • Photo: Juan Ortiz

      Juan Ortiz answered on 10 Jun 2016:

      It is true!! Antibiotics are a type of medicine that can kill bacteria. This is very handy because bacteria are one of the reasons why we get sick. But what are bacteria? Bacteria are a type of microbes or very tiny creatures that can’t be seen with our bare eyes.
      So antibiotics are a great medicine when it comes to cure diseases that have been caused by bacteria. However, because antibiotics are so good that they have been used far too much and sometimes without a reason. For example, people think that a flu can be cured with antibiotics, but flu is not caused by bacteria. This has made the bacteria, who are great survivors, become used to antibiotics. They have been so exposed to antibiotics all the time that they have developed system to escape them or to resist them.
      So scientists are trying to develop new antibiotics that can kill this resistant bacteria. However, THEY ARE FASTER THAN US!!!
      So what can we do to avoid this? You must take antibiotics only when your doctor has prescribed them to you and you should have the amount and during the time recommended. In this way, all the bacteria infecting you will die and you will be healthy again. Otherwise, you won’t kill all the bacteria infecting you, just few of them, the weakest ones. So the strongest will survive and they will produce more bacteria (their descendents) and, in the same way we resemble our parents, the descendent bacteria will be strong as their parents. If we repeat this several times we will create a group of superbacteria and antibiotics will never work again.

    • Photo: Daniela Lobo

      Daniela Lobo answered on 10 Jun 2016:

      Unfortunately, yes, and it’s a serious problem – we are running out of options to destroy harmful bacteria.

      Bacteria are tiny little things but amazingly “smart” – they evolve to develop ways to defend themselves from things that could kill them. Because we are abusing the use of antibiotics (either for medical reasons or in agriculture), bacteria are “learning” how to became resistant. One of the biggest concerns resulting from this is the greater risk of bacterial infection in even simple but necessary medical procedures, like caesarians or small surgeries, that might lead to life-threatening complications.

    • Photo: Danna Gifford

      Danna Gifford answered on 10 Jun 2016:

      The antibiotic crisis has two main causes. The first cause is that bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics—they aren’t killed by the treatment any more. This happens through changes in their genome (that’s DNA) that stop the antibiotic from working on the bacteria. There is a very small chance that this can happen every time an antibiotic is used. Problem is, we’ve been using antibiotics too much and for the wrong reasons, like when someone has a cold, or to make livestock grow faster.

      The second cause is that fewer and fewer new antibiotics are being found. Antibiotics are usually made by other microbes (like fungi and other bacteria), and we’ve discovered many of the ones that are easy to find already. Some scientists are looking for new antibiotics in exotic environments where they haven’t looked before—in microbes living in the sea, for example. However, this kind of research is very expensive and not very profitable, so it’s difficult to get companies interested in paying for the research, even though it’s very important.

    • Photo: Jonathan Hunter

      Jonathan Hunter answered on 10 Jun 2016:

      Basically, yes. I think the others have covered pretty much everything there is to say about this…
      Although, there is research into a creature called a bacteriophage. It’s like a virus that only effects bacteria and not people. As they are living things they can evolve along with bacteria And so potentially prevent the crisis. But I don’t think any of the research has moved out of the early testing phases yet.

    • Photo: Lindsay Robinson

      Lindsay Robinson answered on 11 Jun 2016:

      The antibiotic crisis is going to be a major challenge for everyone. The best thing we can all do is only take antibiotics when they are prescribed by a doctor who is sure that we need them. Overuse of antibiotics ( in humans but also in animals in farming) is what has caused the crisis because it meant that the bacteria was able to adapt to fight the antibiotics.

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