Bacterial Biology and Resistance Against Antibiotics - Essay Example

"Bacterial Biology and Resistance Against Antibiotics" is a perfect example of a paper on infections.
Alexander Fleming discovered antibiotic, a chemical that is capable of inhibiting the growth or destroy other microorganisms such as bacteria. These chemical agents are produced by microorganisms as defences against other microorganisms in order to compete with each other for survival and resources. Antibiotics are being critically used for the past six decades to fight infectious diseases caused by numerous micro-organisms including bacteria. As a result of this chemotherapeutic action of antibiotics, an increase in life expectancy is observed. However, a recent epoch is witnessing resistance of pathogenic microbes towards antibiotic drugs, which is emerging as a major health concern. Conditions like tuberculosis wound infections, pneumonia and septicaemia are nowadays becoming difficult to cure with antibiotics.

One of the key features of microbes such as bacteria involves their resilient behaviour. Disease-causing microbes have numerous modes to develop resistance against antibiotics. Bacteria undergo conjugation, transformation and transfection processes to develop resistance or to multiply genes responsible for inducing resistance in these diseases causing organisms. Moreover, misuse, overuse or underuse of antibiotics by humans also play a leading role in inducing resistance in pathogenic micro-organisms. As a result, about seventy per cent of diseases causing micro-organisms display resistance for at least one antibiotic or drug used for the treatment of disease condition. However, there are disease conditions exhibiting resistance to all antibiotics (e.g. staphylococci and pneumococci) which may turn out to be devastating; causing mortality, such cases require treatment with toxic drugs only. Development of resistance against antibiotics is unavoidable, the loose approaches administered by individuals and wrong use of antibiotics has significantly intensified the development of antibiotic resistance in micro-organisms. As a result, society is witnessing a situation where treatable diseases are becoming untreatable, a similar condition which existed before the existence of antibiotics. Thus, a miracle or wonder cure for numerous infectious diseases is taking the shape of a disaster.

Considering the history of antibiotics, the resistance against antibiotic penicillin was developed by staphylococcus bacteria only after three years of discovery of penicillin (in 1941). The story continues, today staph bacteria have become resistant to nearly all antibiotics. Besides Staphylococcus, other bacterial species such as Enterococcus, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Pseudomonas are resistant to all antibiotics including vancomycin. Multi-drug resistant tuberculosis is almost epidemic in diverse parts of the world. Eventually, antibiotics are not as efficient to combat bacterial infection as it used to be when introduced.

Evolutionarily, genetic mutations are responsible for bringing gene alteration responsible for resistance against the antibiotic, indicating that susceptible ancestors were different from their resistant descendants. The resistant mutant possesses selective reproductive benefit over normal cells. As bacterial cells multiply at a rapid pace (having short generation time) they acclimatize to the varying environmental conditions. Considering the fact that evolutionary changes occur across generations, bacteria with short generation time capably evolve much faster as compared to the rest of the organisms. Besides this, the genetic variation persists in bacterial population which is one of the major reasons for their resistance development against antibiotics. Thus bacterial biology together with current human behaviour is responsible for fast evolution. More exposure of bacterial cells to antibiotics results in the evolution of resistance, strong selection leads to faster evolution. Inappropriate use of antibiotics is an open invitation to the microbial population for rapid adaptation. This pressure could be reduced by judicious use of antibiotics, by preventing mutation and by reducing the spread of resistant microbial species from infected individuals.