Question

Antibiotic Resistance—this is currently a very hot topic. The CDC estimates that up to 50% of all prescriptions written in the outpatient setting may be unnecessary. For this topic, I’d like you to answer and expand on the questions below.

What causes antibiotic resistance?

How bad is antibiotic resistance? Should we be really concerned?

What is the concern with antibacterial soap and do we really need it to be “antibacterial?”

Answer 1

Answer. A. Antibiotic resistance refers to resistance against the antibiotics. There are certain pathogens (mostly bacteria) that react differently in our body than what it is actually thought while designing the antibiotic for them. This indifferent behaviour makes them resistant to antibiotics.

There could be various causes of antibiotic resistance like:

• Poor personal hygiene.
• Poor hygiene around the surroundings.
• Non discovery of new antibiotics.
• Non completion of prescribed course of antibiotics.
• The dosage prescribed by the doctor is high than to what it is required by the patient.

Answer B. Yes, we should really be concerned for antibiotic resistance because it can turn bad sometimes. Antibiotic resistance can be fatal for an individual. It can be explained by taking a common example of the disease tuberculosis. This disease is quite common in a country like India and the causative agent for it is a bacterium. The course duration varies from 18months to 36 months. During this course, the affected individual is suggested to have medicine every day empty stomach. Unfortunately, skipping of any dosage not only nullifies the course but also develop antibiotic resistance in an individual against the same antibiotic. This skipping of one to many doses of the medicine can take the life of an individual due to antibiotic resistance as there are hardly any antibiotics available in the market to cure for such resistance.

Answer C. Antibacterial soaps are used to repel the surface bacteria on the skin , thus regular use of soap will definitely reduce the entry of bacteria into the body and ultimately will help in poor occurrence of any bacterial disease.

Thus, to reduce the chances of getting bacterial diseases anti bacterial soap should be used frequently. They lessen the chances of catching a disease but an individual does not becomes 100% safe from bacterial diseases by the usage of anti bacterial soaps.