Germs Vs Germs : Hema Nalini writes on antibiotics

“This is the only field within pharmaceutical science where you come out with a drug and you don’t want it to be used too much,” explained, a CEO of a start-up dedicated to discovering new antibiotics.

We know that antibiotics are being used to treat infections which are caused by microorganisms mostly by bacteria.

The first antibiotic, discovered by the British microbiologist Alexander Fleming in the 1920s, came from a mold (fungus), Penicillium notatum. has revolutionised the modern medicine. Since then, antibiotics have become one of the most common classes of drugs – used to prevent and treat infections, and make possible complex surgeries that have become routine.

Microorganisms vs microorganisms:

It’s interesting to know that antibiotics are chemical substances produced by microorganisms which kill or inhibit the growth of other infectious microorganisms. While doing tests in a Microbiology lab, we often see a circle formed, (which indicates the effectiveness of the specific antibiotic used ) around the sample taken from an infected person during the antibiotic sensitivity test.

Antibiotic resistance

Bacteria are termed drug-resistant when they are no longer inhibited by an antibiotic to which they were previously sensitive. The emergence and spread of antibacterial-resistant bacteria has continued to grow due to both the over-use and misuse of antibiotics.

Treating a patient with antibiotics causes the microbes to adapt or die; this is known as ‘selective pressure’. If a strain of a bacterial species acquires resistance to an antibiotic, it will survive the treatment. As the bacterial cell with acquired resistance multiplies, this resistance is passed on to its offspring. In ideal conditions some bacterial cells can divide every 20 minutes; therefore after only 8 hours in excess of 16 million bacterial cells carrying resistance to that antibiotic could exist.

A very large number of antibiotics have been discovered, but probably less than 1% of them have therapeutic value. Discovering new antibiotics and bringing them to the market is a big challenge.

Why should we use antibiotics with caution…

No new classes of antibiotics have been discovered since the 1980s.

Pharmaceutical companies are less interested in developing antibiotics than drugs that treat lifelong diseases because people only take antibiotics for a short time.

“This is the only field within pharmaceutical science where you come out with a drug and you don’t want it to be used too much,” explained, a CEO of a start-up dedicated to discovering new antibiotics.

The combination of low sales and low prices limits the amount of money companies can make. It can take 10-15 years and over $1billion to develop a new antibiotic.
Without financial incentives, many large pharmaceutical companies have started to pull out of the field.

Discovering and developing genuinely new antibiotics is challenging: the science is tricky and the research and development process is time-consuming and expensive, and often fails.

The antibiotics that have been brought to market in the past three decades are variations of drugs that have been discovered before that is the name of the drug by different companies is different but the chemical composition is same. As we call It’s like a old wine in a new bottle.

Discovering and developing genuinely new antibiotics is challenging: the science is tricky and the research and development process is time-consuming and expensive, and often fails.

According to the World Health Organization and the Pew Charitable Trust, there are currently between 40 and 50 antibiotics in clinical development. Many of these will only bring limited benefits compared to existing treatments. But it will take up to 10 years for the first of these drugs to make it to market.

Why we should use antibiotics only when necessary?

Resistant bacteria do not respond to the antibiotics and continue to cause infection. A common misconception is that a person’s body becomes resistant to specific medicines. However, it is the bacteria, not people, that become resistant to the medicines.

Each time you take or give a patient an antibiotic unnecessarily or improperly, you increase the chance of developing medicine-resistant bacteria. As we know there are no new antibiotics developed from the past few decades. Therefore, it is critically important to take antibiotics only when necessary. Because of these resistant bacteria, some diseases that used to be easy to treat are now becoming nearly impossible to treat.

HEMA NALINI IS AN ARTIST AND FORMER LECTURER. HER QUALIFICATIONS BEING BACHELOR IN EDUCATION, POST – GRADUATION IN MICROBIOLOGY, SHE ALSO DID A COURSE IN BIOINFORMATICS AT IIT MUBMAI. SHE LIVES AND WORKS FROM HYDERABAD.