Vaccines and Antibiotics Flashcards
How do vaccines provide protection?
Vaccines provide protection by establishing memory cells that have fought off a safe form of the infection so that when the real infection comes your body can quickly reproduce the antibodies
Why must you vaccinate a high percentage of the population?
An epidemic can occur if a disease rapidly spreads through a population, to stop this a high percentage of the population must be vaccinated to create “herd immunity”
Are vaccines and medication risk free?
No, genetic variation means everyone’s different and everyone’s affected differently by vaccines and so side affects can vary causing potential for risks
How else can we reduce infection?
Antimicrobials can be used to kill or slow the growth of infections, they work on all microbes.
Antibiotics are a type of antimicrobials specifically used on bacteria.
How can microbes react over time?
Some microbes can develop to be resistant to antimicrobials if a course is not completed properly and some of the infection remains after the drugs or the course is wrongly prescribed
How do mutations affect antimicrobials effectiveness?
Bacteria genes can randomly change, mutate, leaving them less effected by drugs. These resistant strains then reproduce and can spread through the population causing large scale ineffectiveness of medication
How is a new drug tested before being made available to the public?
First it is tested on lab animals or grown samples of human cells. They then make it to clinical trials, tests on healthy humans who have volunteered and also humans affected by the illness
What kinds of trials can be done and how are placebos used in each?
There is open-label where the researcher and patient know what drug is being tested.
Single blind trials involve the patient not knowing if they are receiving a placebo or the real thing.
Double blind trials involve everyone not knowing if its a placebo or the real thing
Why must some trials be long-term?
Some trials must be long-term so that the effects of the drug are monitored until we can be sure there are no wide scale side affects and to see if the drugs effectiveness maintains.
