This is a phrase that is big in the media at the moment, with big pharmaceutical companies offering rewards to those who solve this problem, but what does it mean?
Antibiotic resistance is, in basic terms where the antibiotic drugs we take for bacterial infections stop having an effect on the bacteria. This will stop us being able to treat these, and may lead to people dying from infections such as gangrene.
The antibiotic penicillin works by keeping a bacterium from building a cell wall. Bacteria and human cells also differ in the structure of their cell membranes and the machinery they use to build proteins or copy DNA. Some antibiotics dissolve the membrane of just bacterial cells. Others affect protein-building or DNA-copying machinery that is specific to bacteria.
Antibiotic resistance is caused by several things, such as patients demanding antibiotics when they do not need them. Part of this is due to the current lack of ability to tell whether a disease is viral or bacterial. People need to attempt to reduce the number of antibiotics they take, especially for non threatening infections, if they don’t the antibiotics will not be able to help for incredibly serious and life threatening infections.
Catherine's Science Blog 