Antibiotics

Antibiotics
By Jay Patel

Antibiotics are medicines that are are used to treat bacterial infections and bacterial diseases. Antibiotics are extremely powerful medicines, used to either kill bacteria or prevent them from reproducing. Used properly, they can help save lives. Antibiotics work to kill bacteria by interfering with their metabolic rates.

• Help to treat diseases caused by bacteria.
• Ineffective against viruses and viral infections.
• Not using antibiotics correctly can result in antibiotic resistance, which occurs when bacteria change and become resistant to antibiotics.
• When bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, a superbug can be formed, where no antibiotic would work on bacteria.
• Avoid drinking alcohol while taking antibiotics.
• Antibiotics work by affecting things that bacterial cells have that human cells do not have. For example, penicillin prevents certain bacteria from building cell walls. Other antibiotics dissolve just the membrane of the bacteria, while others affect protein production or DNA replication in bacteria.

What I learned from antibiotics is how bacteria can become super resistant to antibiotics to the point where they don't work anymore. I found that scary, and how our frequent use of antibiotics is building up a resistance for the bacteria, making them more resistant and harder to kill. I feel that eventually antibiotics will not work anymore, and a new method will have to be made. This can be applied outside of biology in the form of medicine, as doctors prescribe antibiotics to patients, and scientists make more antibiotics.

Citations

"Antibiotics." MedilinePlus.com, MedilinePlus, 5 Apr. 2017, medlineplus.gov/antibiotics.html.

Anderson, Leigh A. "Can you Drink Alcohol with Antibiotics?" Drugs.com, 22 Sept. 2016, www.drugs.com/article/antibiotics-and-alcohol.html.

"What is an Antibiotic?" Genetic Science Learning Center, 15 Aug. 2014, learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/microbiome/antibiotics/.

Notes from Mr. Black's class