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Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria

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Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria
Kwame D. Brooks
BIO/101
October 16, 2014
Prof. Rafael Frim

Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria
Even though the indiscriminate use of antibiotics is enhanced by their free and uncontrolled availability ‘across the counter’, particularly in developing and Third World countries where regulatory mechanisms leave much to be desired. Alternately, even in developed countries, there is a clear connection between overall antibiotic intake and the rate of recurrence of the discovery of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. According to Barry Commoner, “First law of ecology: ‘Everything is related to everything else’.” As such, these antibiotic-resistant bacteria evolves into a most important health problem that becomes the foundation for some patients to be incurable to previously treated infections because the development of antibiotic resistance. This is primarily due to disproportionate and often superfluous use of antibiotics in humans and animals. According to G. Gopal Rio “Risk factors for the spread of resistant bacteria in hospitals and the community can be summarized as overcrowding, lapses in hygiene or poor infection control practices. Increasing antibiotic resistance in bacteria has been exacerbated by the slow pace in developing newer antibiotics and bacteria can be innately resistant or may acquire resistance to antibiotics” (1998). In essence, these two types of conflict are probably in the same way significant in the perspective of the management of infections. Subsequently, the “Acquired drug resistance may develop as a result of antibiotic-induced mutations altering the target site for the antibiotic, or by acquisition of new drug resistance genes from either the same or different species (infectious resistance)” (Rio, 1998). Therefore, it is critical to assess the action that could be taken to reduce antibiotic-resistant bacteria

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