Increasingly resistant bacteria

2002/07/29 Roa Zubia, Guillermo - Elhuyar Zientzia

• Mikrobiologia
• Medikuntza

The
announcement that the bacterium Stratophylococcus aureus would become resistant to vancomycin in 1987 was, according to experts, a matter of time. Now the announcement has been fulfilled: Michigan is seen in a patient. The bacteria are very common, but so far it has been controlled by bancomycin.

Today it is used because it developed the methicillin resistance that was already used to treat this bacteria. However, according to doctors, this solution would not last long, since the bacteria S. aureus occurs in the same infections in which enterococcus is produced, and this second bacterium is resistant to bancomycin for a long time. Moving from one resistance to another has been a matter of time.

End of the age of antibiotics

Since the Scottish Sir Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, man has had a chemical weapon to eliminate bacteria. Penicillin, cephalosporin, and many other types of antibiotics have been used to treat diseases caused by bacteria. As a result, highly deadly infections have been controlled and destroyed. Therefore, the discovery of antibiotics has often been considered the most important moment of medicine (sometimes of all science).

However, in recent years bacteria have 'learned' how to deal with antibiotics. Antibiotics have been overused in almost all infections and if treatment is not done until the death of all specimens of bacteria, they develop their resistance. Consequently, bacteria gradually become resistant to any antibiotic. Humans make and test new synthetic antibiotics, but it doesn't take long for bacteria to control them too. Therefore, diseases that were once fully controlled appear in new epidemics.

It
is possible that bacterial infections should be addressed with a new strategy, perhaps the end of the age of antibiotics, and what Fleming found is a solution for a century. Antibiotics can lose their fame and name within a few years in the history of science.