Fighting diseases:Drugs Flashcards
what are painkillers?
drugs that relieve pain.However don’t actually tackle the cause of the disease or kill the pathogens,they just help to reduce the symptoms.
what are antibiotics?
drugs that kill or prevent the growth of the bacteria causing the problem without killing your own body cells.
why is it important to be prescribed the right antibiotic?
different antibiotics kill different types of bacteria
why doesn’t antibiotics destroy viruses?
viruses reproduce using your body cells,which makes it very difficult to develop drugs that destroy the virus without killing the body cell’s.
can you give an benefit of antibiotics?
has reduced the number deaths from communicable diseases caused by bacteria.
Bacteria have the ability to mutate,what can this cause?
them to be resistant to an antibiotic
you may have a infection,some of the bacteria may be resistant to antibiotics.what does this mean?
when you treat the infection,only the non-resistant strains of the bacteria will be killed
How is resistant a example of natural selection?
the individual resistant bacteria will survive and reproduce,and the population of the resistant strain will increases.
what does MRSA cause and what is it resistant to?
serious wound infections and is resistant to the most powerful antibiotic(meticilin)
what can be done to slow down the rate of development of resistant strains?
doctors to avoid over-prescribing antibiotics and to finish the full course of the antibiotic.
how do plants protect themselves from pests and pathogens?
they produce a variety of chemicals to defend themselves
what can the chemicals made by plants be used for?
as drugs to treat human diseases or relieve symptoms.
what is aspirin?
used as a painkiller and to lower fever.it was developed from a chemical found in willows.
what is digitalis?
used to treat heart conditions.it was developed from a chemical found in foxgloves.
some drugs are created by microorganisms,can you give an example?
Fleming was clearing out some petri dishes containing bacteria.He noticed that one of the dishes of bacteria also had a mould on it and the area around the mould was free of bacteria.
he find that the mould on the petri dish was producing a substance that killed the bacteria(penicllin)
