If we carry on using antibiotics and the bacteria mutates, new one’s will have to be invented. But what happenes when

Question: If we carry on using antibiotics and the bacteria mutates, new one's will have to be invented. But what happenes when there is nothing left to update the antibiotics that no longer work ?

Asked by kirsty10 to MarkF, Mark, Michael, Panos, Sarah on 20 Jun 2010 in Categories: General.
- Panos Soultanas answered on 18 Jun 2010:
  
  Kirsty,
  
  bacteria are very quick growing and mutate easily when we put selective pressure on them. they can adapt very quickly to new challenges like antibiotics and the mutants gain a survival advantage which maes them resistant to antibiotics. new antibiotics will always be needed. We just need to be protective of antibiotics to slow down the emergence of resistant but inevitably resistance will always arise. Microbes are very resilient organisms and were on earth way before us.they are evolutionary very powerfull beings.
- Sarah Burl answered on 18 Jun 2010:
  
  There will be a real problem with the infection when this happens. This is the case for drug resistant diseases like some forms of TB.
- Mark Travis answered on 18 Jun 2010:
  
  Very good question….. I guess we need to keep evolving the medicines that we use to deal with bacteria that mutate to be protected from antibiotics. I am not sure there is any day soon that every bacteria will become resistant to antibiotics, but we need to keep updating our kowledge to ensure we always have targets to go for.
- Mark Fogg answered on 18 Jun 2010:
  
  Hi again kirsty, we have to keep finding new antibiotics, it’s a simple as that. Every time a bug mutates itself, it potentially gives us a new way of attacking it. Just because a particular drug didn’t work after the last mutation, it doesn’t mean it won’t work after the next mutation. Mutations are the Achilles heel of bugs as well as their greatest strength.
- Michael Loughlin answered on 20 Jun 2010:
  
  according to genetics of Actimomycetes( the bacteria we get most of the antibiotics from ) there should be at least 30, 00 new anbtibiotics that we have not found yet..in that species alone.. added onto that we are constantly changing antibiotics structure to wrok better, looking at antibacterial bacteria and viruses to hunt down infectioous bacteria for us,m, aso we still ahve a lot of options ahead of us

Question: If we carry on using antibiotics and the bacteria mutates, new one's will have to be invented. But what happenes when there is nothing left to update the antibiotics that no longer work ?

Comments