• Question: What is antibiotic resistance and what do you base your scientific answers from, ie- past history, religious scriptures and combinr your findings to make observations and conclusions?

    Asked by ninja to MarkF, Mark, Michael, Panos, Sarah on 21 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Mark Fogg

      Mark Fogg answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Antibiotic resistance is where bacteria are no longer killed by an antibiotic, they ‘resist’ its effects and grow quite happily in its presence.

      My scientific answers are ALWAYS based on testable evidence from Peer reviewed scientific papers and journals and my own experiments.

    • Photo: Panos Soultanas

      Panos Soultanas answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Hi ninja,

      Antibiotic resistance is when bacteria become ‘immune’ to antibiotic drugs and they cannt be killed any more. Bacteria grow incredibly quickly (they double every ~20 minutes) and can acquire many mutations relatively quickly. Some of these mutations are beneficial to them because they make them resistant to antibiotics and so they have a survival advantage over other bactera that are not resistant to antibiotics. The final result is that the resistant bacteria grow well and outcompete the sensitive bacteria thus becoming the dominan species.

      we can see this process in the lab. Some bacteria are now resistant to all antibiotics we have and are deadly. Wide and unnecessary use of antibiotics creates more mutations to bacteria and gives them more chances to become resistant.

    • Photo: Mark Travis

      Mark Travis answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Antibiotic resistance is when bacteria become resistant to the effects of antibiotics so aren’t killed by them (therefore if a disease-causing bacteria becomes resistant, this can be very dangerous).

      As for what I base my scientific answers on…. always on scientific work that has been published before my work, and the experiments that I do.

    • Photo: Michael Loughlin

      Michael Loughlin answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      antibiotic resistance is where bacteria become resistant to antibiotics so they are no longer killed by them

      this can be due to 99 out of the bacteria dying from a treatment but the one that survives is tougher..replicated making 100 new now a bit tougher bacteria

      or as we are discoereing now the genes for resistance can sometimes move from one bacteria to another so a bacteria with no history of toughening enough can become very resistant by just hanging around with resistant bacteria..
      its called Horizontal transmission

    • Photo: Sarah Burl

      Sarah Burl answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      This sounds like a 3 h exam question!!
      In short antibiotic resistance is caused by bugs that still grow after all antibiotics have been given so they are often termed super bugs. They can be caused by being in an environment that is too clean like a hospital. As there is no competition to grow from other bugs they can grow too much and cause big problems. the other way these ocurr is when people don’t finish their antibiotics that are given for a diseasewhich means that they may feel fine but there are probably a few stronger bugs still around and if these are not got rid of then they will continue to grow and cause problems so remember to take your full course of antibiotics if you have to take them, it is really important to do so.

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