B6 - Preventing and treating diseases Flashcards
What are Antibiotics?
They help to fight infections, destroy bacterial infections (not viruses like flu). They damage the bacterial cells without harming your own cells. Antibiotics can be injected into the bloodstream to a serioursly ill patient which makes sure the antibiotics reaches the pathogen as fast as possible. They are also prescribed by a doctor as a pill. They cannot kill viral pathogens so they have no effect on the virus inside your body, due to the difficulty of developing drugs that do not harm cells and tissues whilst killing the virus.
What happens if I use antibiotics when an infection occurs and it doesn’t seem to affect it?
Strains of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics are ‘evolving’ which causes particular types of bacteria are resistant to certain antibiotics - that eliminates the disease.
Why are the strains of bacteria being resistant a problem?
It is a concern as many antibiotics to become useless and helps bacteria resist more antibiotics.
How can we reduce the rate of resistant strains?
Doctors should responsibly prescribe medicine, treating non-serious or viral infections. Patients should complete their ‘course’of antibiotics so all bacteria is killed and none survive to mutate and form resistant strains. The use of antibiotics should not be used on the outside enviromnent as bacteria roams a lot outdoors causing the liklihood to be very high for an infection to occur, and for the infection to become resistant.
What are painkillers?
They will relieve the pain (headache, sore throat, etc) and they come in the forms of tablets. However, they will not have any effect on the virus in your tissues to make you feel ill. Painkillers can be bought at a chemist or a supermarket to relieve the symptoms from the virus but they will not cure you, that is up to your immune system to overcome the virus.
What are the examples of painkillers?
Paracetamol
Aspirin
Morphine
What are examples of antibiotics?
Penicillin
Amoxicillin
Flucloxacillin
Where do painkillers originate from?
Painkillers originate from a compound found in the back of willow trees; Felix Hoffmann synthesised acetyl salicylic acid (aspirin) which not only relieves pain but has less side effects than aspirin.
Who discovered penicillin?
Alexander Fleming, he discovered it from the penicillium mould.
If a drug is effective what must it do?
It must prevent or cure a disease or at least make you feel better.
If the drug is safe what must it do?
The drug must not be too poisonous and not have a lot of side effects (long term/short term). It also must have the ability to be removed from our bodies after the pathogen has been neutralised.
What is placebo?
It is a dummy treatment the looks like the new treatment, it will take no effect - and no hints are given to either. Neither the doctors and participants know which one is the real and which is placebo, this is to have neutral decision during the tests (double-blind trial).
Why do we test drugs on specific types of people? (Hint: An error occured).
Thalidomide is a drug (taken) to help people sleep. During the trials on animals it was said it was completely safe for everyone as the dose wasn’t high enough to kill a rat, and because of that this lead to the medicine to become prescribed for pregnant women as a cure for morning sickness. However, the women that had taken thalidomide had suffered newborn with birth defects - this is why the drug must be tested on humans to deem it ‘safe’, and must be tested on people who are intended to take it.
