Antibiotic Resistance – The Real Threat for Next Generation

Have you ever thought what antibiotic resistance is?
Do you know what could be the effect of taking antibiotics for a long time?

After reading the above two questions, a question may also arise in your mind – why you need to be concerned about antibiotic resistance? You need to know that antibiotic resistance is now considered as the real threat for our next generations. Improper administration and lack of proper knowledge about the fatal threat of antibiotics are now forwarding our next generations to the upcoming threat. As a result, it is an immense need that you must keep yourself concerned about the possible effects of resistance to antibiotics.

However, if you never heard the term antibiotic resistance or have less knowledge about the drug resistance fact, pay your full attention and carefully read this post to understand what antibiotic resistance is and the possible threat of antibiotic resistance.

What are Antibiotics?

Antibiotics are potential drugs that are frequently prescribed by physicians to kill or stop the growth of bacteria or microorganisms. It is usually prescribed, if your immune system is exposed to harmful microorganisms.

What is Antibiotic Resistance?

As I have mentioned above, antibiotics possess potential killing and inhibitory properties over bacteria and other microorganisms. When these microorganisms grow the ability to survive with the lethal doses of an antibiotic drug, it is called antibiotic resistance. More precisely, it is the loss of antibacterial properties of an antibiotic.

How Bacteria Grows the Ability of Resistance?

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If you are not a medical professional or quite unfamiliar with the biological terms, it may be difficult for you to understand this mechanism properly. That’s why, I am writing this part in a non-academic style to make you understand the mechanism in an easier way.

The understanding of bacterial resistance to antibiotics will first require you to understand how antibiotics work. Usually, antibiotics kill or inhibit bacteria by inactivating or neutralizing an essential cell protein in bacteria. When bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, this essential protein is either removed or altered. Eventually, this changing in the essential protein of bacteria discourages antibiotics from attaching to the target site.

Over dosing of antibiotics and frequent consumption of antibiotics in diseases, where these drugs are not greatly required, are the major reasons for the bacterial resistance to antibiotics. You may know that from the beginning to the far end, every being in this world – either plant or animal – is going through and will go through continuous changing in genetic coding. The genetic material of bacteria is also going through spontaneous changing or mutation. As a result, these bacteria are not only upgrading with new genetic material but also improving their resistance to antibiotics. You need to know that these genetically altered bacteria are now preventing antibiotics from inactivating the specific protein. Many potential antibiotics have already lost their effectiveness over different gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. Tetracycline and drugs of the first-generation and second-generation penicillin are the greatest example of drugs that have already lost effectiveness over several gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria.

What are the Real Threats for Next Generation?

In fact, the bacterial resistance to antibiotics is due to random changing or spontaneous mutation in the genetic coding of the bacteria. In other words, it is an environmental or biological pressure for the bacteria to keep their existence from extinct. More frankly, if a bacterium fails to find out the survival techniques now, the next generation will obviously discover the techniques with improved genetic model. Consequently, the drugs that we are using now to kill or inhibit bacterial growth may not work in future.

As the bacteria are growing resistance to antibiotics, we need upgraded and more improved drugs to stop the bacterial growth in our body. Although, the scientific studies and researches are running in full throttle to discover new and improved antibiotics, but the antibiotic resistance is underlying a significant risk and danger to our next generation. As the potential drugs are losing effectiveness, misuse of these potential drugs may lead us to a day when we will not find any alternative to stop these bacteria.