Bacteria resistant to antibiotics don’t represent anything new, but they can surely become a serious issue if they spread. For instance, we spoke recently at our publication about a ‘super gonorrhea’ strain and new strains of typhoid fever.
But there is new hope that antibiotic resistance is something the medical world can halt. According to Phys.org, researchers from University College London (UCL) and Birkbeck led a team that could have made a significant step towards that goal.
We must be careful with antibiotics
Nobody denies the importance of antibiotics. They saved millions of lives out there and will continue so. But overusing the drugs and using them in the wrong way is creating the right playground for bacteria that are resistant to them and even accelerating their prevalence. Antibiotic resistance can even become a global issue worldwide and a burden too big to carry for healthcare systems.
There is a structure that’s allowing the transport of genes resistant to antibiotics between bacteria, and for the first time, scientists have found it.
Professor Gabriel Waksman, the lead author of the new study and who serves as a Professor at the UCL Structural & Molecular Biology and Birkbeck, University of London, stated as Phys.org quotes:
We are in a global crisis of antibiotic resistance, which threatens to overcome healthcare systems all over the world—the World Health Organization describes antibiotic resistance ‘as one of the biggest threats to global health, food security and development today.
Nhs.uk tells us about the side effects of antibiotics, and the most common of them affect the digestive system. About 1 in 10 people deal with them, and here’s the list: loss of appetite, abdominal pain, vomiting, nausea, diarrhea, indigestion, and bloating.
However, it’s important to keep in mind that the side effects mentioned above are usually of mild intensity and should disappear after the patient finishes his treatment.
The new study was published in Nature.
