Antibiotic Resistance in Anaerobic Bacteria Essay - 1

Antibiotic Resistance in Anaerobic Bacteria - Essay Example Then there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non†lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant. Here is a hypothetical illustration. Mr. X. has a sore throat. He buys some penicillin and gives himself, not enough to kill the streptococci but enough to educate them to resist penicillin. He then infects his wife. Mrs. X gets pneumonia and is treated with penicillin. As the streptococci are now resistant to penicillin the treatment fails. Mrs. X dies. Who is primarily responsible for Mrs. X’s death?† (Fleming, p88). It is not only the irrational use of the drugs that cause antibiotic resistance but there are reports of the naturally occurring resistance. According to an experiment conducted by Joshua and Esther Lederberg in 1952, penicillin-resistant strains of bacteria developed much more before the start of penicillin in medicinal practices. Joshua Lederberg and his student Zinder also demonstrated t he pre-existence of Streptomycin resistance strains (Nelson, p 294). The major antibiotic-resistant pathogen associated with nosocomial infection is Staphylococcus aureus. It was one of the earlier organisms to develop penicillin resistance. Methicilin was then used against the resistant strains but in the year 1961MRSA (Methycillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) was detected in Britain. It was reported that there was an increase in the number of fatal cases of sepsis from 4% in 1991 to 37% in 1999 in the UK due to MRSA. By the 1980s MRSA had spread and become quite common in US hospitals and along with resistance to Methicillin. There was a steady increase in oxacillin (Methycillin) resistant S. aureus in U.S. hospitals in the year 1997 which increased to 26.2%. ( Pfaller et al,p1886). Most of these Staphylococcus aureus also showed resistance to tetracycline and erythromycin.