Antibiotics resistant superbugs - Research Paper Example

For example, there are approximately 2 million cases of antibiotic resistant infections and about 23, 000 deaths in the United Sates every year (Trossman, 2014, p.1). This implies that antibiotic resistance is an imminent problem that requires to be addressed. However, not all superbugs have ties to hospital medication and some actually have ties and are spread in the community. Nevertheless, the most common superbugs are related to hospital medications hence necessitating the need for further research in relation to medication related superbugs.

Once bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics, there is imminent need to develop better antibiotics that are seemingly stronger in order to get rid of these bacteria. Antibiotics in use for the first time are referred to as first-line antibiotics while the newly developed antibiotics are second-line agents and depending on the severity of the bacteria, the agents can be developed further even to third-line and fourth-line antibiotics. For example, MRSA has proven resistant to a number of antibiotics thereby necessitating the need to develop antibiotics further third-line and in some environments fourth-line antibiotics.

For example, studies by National Nosocomial Infections Surveillance in 2003 showed that 60% of Staphylococcus aureus related infections were resistant to methicillin (Capriotti, 2007, p.1). However, all antibiotics developed after the first line antibiotics are not keen to such factors as safety, availability and cost as compared to the first line antibiotics. This implies that predecessors of first-line antibiotics may not be readily available in all areas thereby further increasing the problem of superbugs.

Superbugs are mainly formed through genetic mutations or procurement of new genes from the continued interactions between bacteria. Gene transfer between bacteria is facilitated by the fact that they mostly