B6 Preventing and Treating Diseases Flashcards
What are antibiotics?
- Antibiotics are drugs used to kill or prevent the growth of bacteria
Each type of antibiotic interferes with bacterial life processes (Eg. making a cell wall)
Can antibiotics kill all pathogens?
No
Fungus - Antifungal
Virus - Antiviral
What does antibiotic efficacy mean?
How affective it kills the bacteria
Painkillers are used to ……
relief any pain, however they can’t destroy the pathogen and cure the disease
Explain the development of antibiotic resistance.
Some bacteria can mutate to become resistant (by overuse or underuse of an antibiotic)
So when it is used again there is less competion for survival so the mutated bacteria pass down their resistant genes as they reproduce.
What is a vaccination?
Weakend/dead form of a pathogen that still retains it’s antigen (receptor)
What is an antigen?
Receptors on the surface of all cells
Define herd immunity.
Herd immunity involves vaccinating a large proportion of the population against a certain pathogen (e.g. flu vaccine). This is to reduce the number of people getting the disease and therefore it reduces the spread of the disease
What is meant by antibiotic efficacy?
Antibiotic efficacy is how effective an antibiotic is at killing a certain type of bacteria.
Name a common antibiotic.
Penicillin
From what plant does the painkiller aspirin originate from?
The painkiller aspirin originates from willow.
From which microorganism does the antibiotic penicillin originate?
Penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming from the Penicillium mould.
Why do new drugs have to be tested before use?
To check it’s efficacy, toxicity and the dosage required
What are the 4 stages of drug testing?
1) Pre-clinical trials
2) Phase 1 clinical trials
3) Phase 2 clinical trials
4) Phase 3 clinical trials
What is the drug tested on in the pre-clinical trials?
Animal tissue (at least two mammals)
What is the drug tested on in all three clinical trials?
Human volunteers
What happens on Phase 1 of Clinical testing?
Healthy volunteers are given a low dosage to test
What happens on Phase 2 of Clinical testing?
Drug is tested on a small number of patients (single/double blind tests are used)
What happens in Phase 3 of Clinical testing?
Very large number of patients are given either a placebo or the drug (single/double blind test)
What is a single blind test?
Some patients are given a placebo to acts as a control
Patients don’t know
Doctor knows
What is a double blind test?
Some patients are given a placebo to act as a control
Patients don’t know
Doctor dosen’t know
What is a placebo?
A substance which looks identical to the drug but dosen’t contain it.
- used to find psychological effects of a drug
How are monoclonal antibodies produced?
Fusing a plasma cell (lymphocyte) with a tumour/cancer cell (so it clones rapidly)
What is a monoclonal antibody?
Monoclonal antibodies are produced from a single clone of cells, consisting of identical antibody molecules.
