Using drugs to treat diseases Flashcards
Antibiotics
These are medicines that can work inside the body to kill the bacteria that cause the diseases.
How do antibiotics work?
Antibiotics such as penicillin work by killing the infective bacteria that cause the disease. They damage the bacteria cell without harming your own cells.
The use of antibiotics has…
greatly reduced the number of deaths from infectious diseases.
What is very important when using antibiotics?
That the right antibiotic is chosen and used.
Antibiotics have no effect…
on viruses. Since viruses reproduce inside the cell.
It is extremely difficult to develop antibiotics, which will…
kill the virus inside the cell, without damaging the cell and tissues of your body at the same time.
Antiseptic
Is a liquid that kills microorganisms in the environment.
Painkillers
does not affect the pathogen that is causing the harm. It just eases the symptoms and makes us feel better.
Mutation of pathogens
Mutation produces a new strain of bacteria by natural selection. These bacteria developed resistance to antibiotics.
Antibiotic kills individual pathogens of…
the non-resistant strains but individuals of resistant pathogens survive and reproduce, so the population of resistant strain rises.
Antibiotics and vaccination may no longer…
be effective against new resistant strains of the pathogen.
The new resistant strains will…
spread rapidly because people are not immune to it and there is no effective treatment.
To prevent more resistant strains of bacteria appearing:
- not to overuse antibiotics, currently, a doctor no longer use antibiotics to treat non-serious disease(mild throat)
- the right type of bacteria must be used
- important to finish their course of medicine every time.
Why is it important to finish the course of medicine?
This is to make sure that even bacteria in the early stages of developing resistance are killed by the antibiotics.
MRSA
A bacterium that became resistant to antibiotics.
