3.1.8 Antibiotics & Painkillers

• Antibiotics can be taken as a pill, syrup or directly into the bloodstream
• Different antibiotics are effective against different types of bacteria, so receiving the correct one is important
• Their use has decreased the number of deaths from bacterial diseases
• An example is Penicillin The great concern is that bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics.

• Mutations can occur during reproduction resulting in certain bacteria no longer being killed by antibiotics
• When these bacteria are exposed to antibiotics, only the non-resistant one die
• The resistant bacteria survive and reproduce, meaning the population of resistant bacteria increases
• This means that antibiotics that were previously effective no longer work To prevent the development of these resistant strains we can:

1. Stop overusing antibiotics- this unnecessarily exposes bacteria to the antibiotics
2. Finishing courses of antibiotics to kill all of the bacteria