Danger of abusing antibiotics

Since their introduction, antibiotics have prevented incalculable suffering and saved millions of lives, writes Dr Marga Boyani

Antibiotics are one of the most revolutionary discoveries of the 20th Century. They kill or prevent bacteria from breeding and help our immune systems cope with infection.

In the right setting, antibiotics are a powerful and life saving tool. Taken as prescribed, they are generally safe and effective at combating bacterial infections. But antibiotics do not cure all infections because they are medicines designed to treat infections caused by bacteria only.

Antibiotics do not work against viruses and never cure or shorten the duration of viral infections. Many infections like the common cold or flu are caused by viruses.

However, many of us think that antibiotics are the ultimate cure for every wheeze, sneeze, snuffle and ache, yet their powers are strictly limited and if used frequently or incorrectly, they can do more harm than good.

Resistant bugs

Our casual use of antibiotics over the years has created ‘super bugs’, which are bacteria that are resistant to all antibiotics and cause hard-to-treat infections.

Like all living things, bacteria adapt to their environment and when antibiotics have been overused and abused, ordinary bacteria mutate or evolve into super bugs by changing their structure or developing ways to inactivate or neutralise the antibiotic, thus the antibiotic is no longer harmful to them.

These super bugs thrive wherever antibiotics are overused and the more they are abused, the more the bacteria evolve into super bugs.

For example, if you are given an antibiotic for a chest infection and you take them for a couple of days then stop before completing the course because you feel much better, the first doses of the antibiotic will have knocked off the majority of the bacteria, but a few tough bacteria may not have been destroyed because you did not complete your dose. These breed rapidly and, in a few days, their numbers will be enough to cause a second bout of the same illness.

If you then start taking the antibiotics again, the infection will be more difficult to treat because the new bacteria will have developed resistance to the antibiotic. The offspring of these survivors inherit the genes, which allowed the parent bacteria to survive the first antibiotic onslaught. Each generation born from these is slightly more resistant to the antibiotic than the last. This is why people who get recurrent bouts of the same illness often find that antibiotics become less effective without realising they inadvertently bred their own ‘super bugs’.

Misuse and overuse

Besides poor compliance to treatment, people’s reliance on antibiotics for every ache and pain, and the willingness by doctors to prescribe them have also contributed to the problem. Previously, hospitals were the only places where these super bugs could be found, but not any more.

The misuse and overuse of antibiotics in humans, animals and agriculture is responsible for the current problem of antibiotic resistance.

These antibiotic-resistant infections can spread from one person to another and cause severe and harder-to-cure infections — and even death — with longer and expensive hospitalisation. The infections require treatment with stronger antibiotics that can cause more serious side-effects.

The overuse of antibiotics is what has given them a bad name, as without them, our hospitals would be full of dying people.

When properly prescribed, antibiotics are real miracle workers.