The Cause of Antibiotic Resistant Superbugs
There are a number of reasons why bacteria have developed a resistance to antibiotics, says Arjun Srinivasan, MD, CAPT, USPHS. In this video, he discusses the overuse of antibiotics and steps to help in preventing superbugs.
Transcript
There are a number of reasons why bacteria have developed resistance to antibiotics.
And some of them that we have control over and some we don't. We overuse antibiotics in our food supply.
We overuse them in our clinics. We overuse them in our hospitals. And the more we use, the more we create an environment
where we are selecting for the more resistant types of bacteria. Bacteria will develop resistance.
That's just what they do. They mutate. And some of those mutations allow them to become resistant.
What we can do to address that, though, is of course to try and develop new antibiotics. And that's been a challenge for us for a long time now.
People have not been developing new antibiotics, and that's a need that urgently needs to be addressed. But that's going to take a long time.
So an immediate step that we can take is to improve the way we use antibiotics. And we have to do that across the board.
We need to do it in agriculture. We need to do it in hospitals. We need to do it in doctor's offices. And there is good evidence that if we can aggressively
take those steps to improve use, we can have an immediate impact. When you don't need an antibiotic
and you take an antibiotic, you're exposing yourself to all the side effects but none of the benefits. Antibiotics kill off our bad bacteria
but they also kill off the good bacteria in our intestines. And in some instances, when we kill off
all of our good bacteria, these types of bad bacteria can really thrive and cause some pretty serious problems.
So it's important not to be afraid of antibiotics when your doctor thinks you need them. It's important to take them just as they are prescribed.
But it's equally important not to demand antibiotics when they're not needed.
superbugs
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