Antibiotics Flashcards
What as the first antibiotic to be discovered?
Penicillin
How do antibiotics work
They directly attack bacterial cells and stop dna replication .
Antibiotics stop protein synthesis and break down the cell wall
Why don’t antibiotics work on viruses?
A virus is not a cell.
It does not have a cell wall.
It does not make proteins
Virus DNA is copied in the host cell.
What is antibiotic resistance?
When antibiotics can no longer kill the bacteria because a mutation has cause it to become resistant
How was penicillin discovered?
Alexander Fleming accidentally left a Petri dish out of an incubator and when he came back mould had grown, small rings were around the specks of mould where the bacteria hadn’t grown. The mould was releasing an antibiotic.
Why do painkillers not help bacterial infections?
They only stop the information moving from the side of the pain to the brain so fooling the brain to thinking there’s no pain
How can we stop antibiotic resistance?
Take full dosage of antibiotics for the time told by doctors even if you feel better.
Farmers give healthy animals antibiotics in food to stop them getting ill and to aid growth- humans then consume meat and eat antibiotics.
Doctors should only prescribe antibiotics when completely necessary
What is MRSA?
methicillin is a type of antibiotic
Staphylococcus aureus is a strain of bacteria
MRSA is a super buf than cannot be killed by most antibiotics
Why are the number of antibiotic resistant strains increasing?
The more antibiotics are used the more opportunity there is for bacteria to become more resistant
