The War Against Bacteria

John complained of a throbbing sore throat and wanted some antibiotics to deal with his problem. His doctor had a culture done and started him on Zithromax, a broad spectrum antibiotic.  After taking the pills, he felt much better, not long after which, his throat culture came back negative.  It turned out that a virus — not a bacteria — had caused his illness, proving that the antibiotics he took were useless.  Psychologically, he felt good with the pills that his doctor had prescribed, but there was a chance that he might have killed off bacteria that did not need to die, and, at the same time, unwittingly rigged some other bacteria with the ability to resist the drug and survive.  There was a possibility that John might get hit with a serious bacterial disease, such as pneumonia, or a bladder infection, caused by some of those antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and that the drug would not work when he might need it most.

Generally, for a bacterial infection, nothing works more efficaciously than antibiotics, but when taken for a viral infection, such as a cold or the flu, these potent “wonder drugs” wander through the body, killing any bacteria they find, good or bad.  From hereon the problem begins. Some of the microbes alter themselves, escaping the antibiotic, at which time, these resistant bacteria manage to move through the body, sharing their resistant code with other bacteria. The resistant bacteria might even be transferred to others by means of a handshake, coughing or kissing.

Antibiotic resistance is presently escalating into a crisis, so much so that infections are becoming resistant to drugs of choice, not only in the U.S. but all over the world. Even in hospital wards, patients with resistant bacteria are getting to be common, and there are warning signs indicating that the resistant bacteria could spread around and infect other patients, including the hospital staff. Some 14,000 people die each year in the U.S. from drug-resistant bacteria, picked up in the hospital.

Diseases, such as malaria, typhoid, tuberculosis and gonorrhea are showing resistance to drugs.  It is becoming a cause for concern, though we are not as yet at the point in the U.S. where large numbers of people are dying from untreatable infections.  However, different kinds of antibiotics are being used, to the exclusion of the kind generally prescribed by doctors.  Many of the bacteria that are resistant to penicillin are beginning to resist other antibiotics, indicating that a feverish race between man and microbe is presently in progress,  making it urgent to discover new drugs to combat bacteria that continue to resist the kinds of antibiotics on which doctors rely.