Fighting disease - Drugs Flashcards
What are the 2 ways that drugs can deal with disease
1) They can heal the disease
2) They can relieve the symptoms of the disease
What do painkillers do
Relieve of a disease however they don’t actually tackle the cause of the disease or kill pathogens, They just help relieve the symptoms
Give 2 examples of painkillers
- Aspirin
- Cold remedies
What do antibiotics do
They kill or prevent the growth of the bacteria causing the problem.
Do all antibiotics do the same thing
No, different antibiotics kill different types of bacteria so it’s important to be treated with the right one
Give one example of an antibiotic
Penicillin
What is one of the hardest pathogen to destroy
A virus
Why is a virus so hard to kill
Viruses reproduce using your body’s cells which make it very hard to kill the virus without killing your bodies cells as well
What has the use of antibiotics greatly reduced
The amount of deaths from communicable disease
What do bacteria do that makes them insusceptible to antibiotics
They can mutate and the mutations sometimes cause them to become insusceptible to antibiotics
How does a strain of bacteria with only a few bacteria who are resistant to are resistant to antibiotics become a strain of bacteria where every single bacteria is resistant
If somebody is infected with a strain of bacteria where only a few bacteria are resistant and the rest are not and the person takes antibiotics, the antibiotics will kill the unresistant bacteria leaving only the resistant bacteria. The resistant bacteria would reproduce and eventually a new bacteria strain would be formed only containing resistant bacteria
Give an example of a resistant strain of bacteria that cannot be treated by antibiotics
MRSA that causes serious wound infections and is resistant to the most powerful antibiotic - meticillin
What can doctors do to slow down the rate of development of resistant strains of bacteria
The doctors must avoid over prescribing antibiotics
What can patients do to slow down the rate of development of resistant stains of bacteria
Finnish the whole prescribed curse of antibiotics and not just stop when they feel better
What do many drug come from
plants
Why do plants produce drugs
They produce a variety of chemicals to defend themselves against pests and pathogens and some of these chemicals can be used in drugs
What is aspirin
A painkiller used to lower fever
What plant does aspirin come from
A willow
What is digitalis
A drug used to treat heart conditions
What plant does digitalis come from
Foxglove
Who discovered antibiotics
Sir Alexander Fleming
How did Sir Alexander Fleming discover antibiotics
He was cleaning out Perti dishes containing bacteria when he noticed that one of the dishes also had mould on it and the area around the mould was free of bacteria.
What did Sir Alexander Fleming seeing that the area around the mould was free of bacteria help him to discover
That bacteria mould was producing a substance that kills bacteria. This substance was called bacteria
How are drugs made these days
They are made on a large scale in the pharmaceutical industry and they are synthesised by chemists in labs. But processes might still start with a chemical extracted from a plant
