Drugs - Fighting Disease

Question 1

What do painkillers do

Answer 1

• relieve pain, don’t cure what’s wrong. Only reduce symptoms
• An example is aspirin

Question 2

What do antibiotics do

Answer 2

• they kill the bacteria causing the problem without harming your body’s cells
• Different antibiotics kill different types of bacteria, it’s important you use the right one
• Penicillin is an example
• They don’t destroy viruses because viruses reproduce using your own body cells, making it difficult to produce drugs that can kill the virus and not harm your body’s cells

Question 3

How can bacteria become resistant to Antibiotics

Answer 3

• Bacteria can mutate
• Some mutations can make them resistant to an antibiotic
• This means when you treat an infection with antibiotics, the mutated bacteria can still live
• The resistant bacteria can multiply due to no competition for nutrients
• This causes a serious infection that can’t be treated by antibiotics

Question 4

How do you prevent antibiotic resistance

Answer 4

• Only prescribing antibiotics when necessary
• finish the whole course of antibiotics
• Prevent infections in the first place e.g. cleaning wounds and washing hands

Question 5

How have we produced drugs

Answer 5

• chemical properties that can kill pests and pathogens, found in plants
  E.g. Aspirin was developed from a chemical found in a Willow
• Moulds can kill bacteria, when synthesised by chemists in labs, we can produce drugs

Question 6

How did we find out about moulds property to kill bacteria

Answer 6

• from Alexander Fleming
• He was clearing out Petri dishes containing bacteria
• one of the dishes had mould, the area around the mould had no bacteria
• he found that the mould (penicillin notatum) produces a substance that killed bacteria- penicillin

Question 7

Describe the stages of drug testing

Answer 7

• Drug discovery
• pre-clinical trials, testing for toxicity, testing for dosage, testing on cells tissue and animas
• Clinical Trials Healthy volunteers, tested in low dosage to find side effects and find the right dosage
• Clinical double blind trials, tested against placebo to see which is most effective

Question 8

Why is drug testing so important

Answer 8

• to find the drugs safety and effectiveness