If you are sick and have a bacterial infection, you are given an antibiotic. But, very often, the drugs no longer work - bacteria very quickly develop defense mechanisms, become resistant.
Many drugs are actually substances that already exist in nature - for example penicillin. It is produced by some molds to protect themselves from bacteria. Other antibiotics have been created in the laboratory or have been chemically modified to improve their effectiveness, writes Deutsche Welle.
How do antibiotics work?
Penicillins attack the bacterial cell membrane, disrupting its synthesis. With a damaged membrane, bacteria cannot survive and literally burst.
Other drugs, for example, prevent these single-celled creatures from producing the proteins they need to live. Or they block the transport mechanisms in the cell membrane so that the natural balance is disturbed.
Some antibiotics prevent bacteria from multiplying. Already existing bacteria die off after a while, while new ones cannot grow.
Bacteria become resistant to antibiotics
Bacteria reproduce very quickly and therefore can quickly adapt to new conditions and new dangers. Antibiotics are such a danger for them. Bacteria do everything possible to develop defense mechanisms against substances that are harmful to them.
For example, changes in genetic traits can enable them to create new proteins that are useful for them. And they break the antibiotic molecule and make it harmless. Or the bacteria change their cell membrane so that the antibiotic can no longer penetrate inside the cell.
Bacteria often change the structure of the place where the antibiotic "hooks" - they create a new protein that has the same function in the cell, but is insensitive to the action of the antibiotic.
More and more resistant bacteria
If a bacterium has found a way to resist an antibiotic, it passes that trait on genetically to all its descendants. And bacteria can exchange genetic traits even by the simplest mutual contact. Thus, resistance to a substance spreads very quickly. Often bacteria are simultaneously resistant to several types of antibiotics.
For example, methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria is problematic. It is resistant to many available antibiotics. The German Society for Hospital Hygiene estimates that more than 5.000 people die each year in Germany as a result of MRSA infection.
How to prevent the development of resistance?
In order to reduce bacterial resistance, it is important not to take antibiotics lightly, but only when necessary. And when antibiotics are taken, a certain treatment should never be stopped prematurely.
Doctors have backup antibiotics that they use only in critical cases. Precisely because they are rarely used, bacteria could not develop defense mechanisms against these antibiotics.
Continued research should prevent effective antibiotics from running out. Constantly developing new drugs, which bacteria do not yet know, is the only possibility to act against the resistance of bacteria to antibiotics in the long term and to win the race with these disease-causing agents.
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