Antibiotics

Antibiotics

Ages ago, there was a time where even a small infected wound can cause death in human beings. The discovery of antibiotics changed all. Now armed with antibiotics, many deadly infectious diseases can be tackled, which once meant to cause serious illness and death.

The discovery of antibiotics was an accident, which happened in 1928 while a British bacteriologist, Dr. Alexander Fleming was involved in research on staphylococcus bacteria. This bacterium was meant to cause deadly diseases such as pneumonia, sour throat, etc. The discovery happened while he was culturing the bacteria on a nutrient agar media in a Petri dish. He went on a holiday carelessly leaving the dish in his laboratory table without cleaning and sterilization.

After several days, when he returned back, he observed the growth of mould (kind of common fungus, which grows on stale bread/ cheese) on a part of the Petri dish. He also observed that there was no bacterial growth surrounding the mould, which indicated that something in the mould had prevented the growth of bacteria in the culture medium. On further research, Fleming identified that the “mold juice” was capable of killing a wide variety of harmful bacteria, such as streptococcus, meningococcus and diphtheria bacillus.

And that was how the world’s first antibiotic penicillin – was discovered. Fleming named the mould penicillum notatum, from which the antibiotic penicillin was isolated. However, Fleming was not the first using moulds and other living micro organisms to treat infections. Thousands of years ago, the ancient Egyptians, had used mouldy bread to treat infected wounds. Similar practices were observed among ancient Greeks, Serbians and even among Indians. While these were perhaps partially effective, their efficacy is nowhere near the modern antibiotics.

Naturally, many micro organisms and plants synthesize chemicals which are toxic in nature to protect them from invading organisms. The biosynthesized chemicals isolated from the plants/micro organisms and used as medicines against infectious diseases. These substances were called as antibiotics. Ex: Chloramphenicols, tetracyclines, Penicillin derivatives, cephalosporin’s and their derivatives. Today, many infectious diseases in the world are rare due to the advancement in antibiotic research.

Antibiotics don’t work for viruses like cold and the luf.

However, the over use of antibiotics makes it inactive or less effective. Antibiotic resistance is defined as the ability of the microorganisms to resist the effects of an antibiotic to which they were once sensitive. Thus the antibiotics become less effective and we are forced to either consume a larger dose or shifting towards the use of other virulent variants of antibiotics. Thus the research on antibiotics is of great importance to combat the virulent and mutated microorganisms.