Antibiotics and Other Medicines
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What are the two uses of medicines?
• To cure= the source of the disease is removed from the body • To manage the symptoms to make the patient more comfortable
Name some of the most common medicines
• antibitoics (kill bacterial cells) • painkillers • antifungals • anti inflammatories • chemotherapy
What are antibiotics? Why are they a useful medication?
• chemicals that kill or inhibit the growth of bacteria • they’re used by humans as drugs to treat bacterial infections • useful because they can usually target bacterial cells without damaging human body cells
What was the first antibiotic to be isolated and who by?
-penicillin by Alexandra Fleming in 1928
What are the potential risks with using antibiotics?
-they can cause side effects and even severe allergic reactions in some people
Explain the process of antibiotic resistance and why it is a big problem with using antibiotics
• there is genetic variation in a population of bacteria • genetic mutations make some bacteria naturally resistant to an antibiotic • for the bacterium, this ability to resist an antibiotic is a big advantage, as it’ll continue to live in a host who is being treated with the antibiotics so it lives for longer and is able to reproduce more times • this leads to the allele for antibiotic resistance being passed on to lots of offspring, causing it to spread and become more common in the population of bacteria (e.g of natural selection) • this becomes a problem for the person infected as you can’t easily get rid of the bacteria with the antibiotics • increased use of antibiotics mean antibiotic resistance is increasing, and means we are less able to treat potentially life threatening bacterial infections
Give an example of antibiotic resistance bacteria
-MRSA- causes serious wound infections and is resistant to several antibiotics, including meticillin.
What are 2 ways that we can overcome the current problem of antibiotic resistance?
• developing new antibiotics - modifying existing ones
How can the likelihood of antibiotic resistance developing in the first place be reduced?
• doctors are being encouraged to reduce their use of antibiotics- not to prescribe for minor infections or to prevent infections • patients are advised to finish the whole course of antibiotics they were prescribed to make sure the infection is fully cleared and all bacteria killed
What are some of the sources of drugs? Give an example
• many medical drugs are manufactured using natural compounds found in plants, animals or micro-organisms • e.g penicillin is obtained from a fungus, some cancer drugs are made using soil bacteria
Why do possible sources of drugs need to be protected?
-maintaining biodiversity means there is less risk of species dying before we get chance to study them
How can organisms that have already been studied still contribute to the development of new medicines?
New techniques are developed for identifying, purifying and testing compounds
Why are personalised medicines needed?
• your genes determine how your body responds to certain drugs, and different people respond to the same drug in different ways, making some drugs for effective for some people then others • by staying the relationship between someones genetic make up and their responsiveness to drugs, more effective drugs can be produced in the future
What are personalised medicines?
-medicines that are tailored to an individual’s DNA. The theory is that if doctors have your genetic information, they can use it to predict how you will respond to different drugs and only prescribe the one that’ll be the most effective to you.
What is synthetic biology? Give an example as to where this can be applied to
• Involves using technology to design and make things like artificial proteins, cells, or microorganisms • e.g application to medicine- scientists are looking at engineering bacteria to destroy cancer cells, while leaving healthy body cells intact