Iwona Schymalla: Antibiotics - professor, do they still work?
Prof. Ernest Kuchar: They definitely work. On the other hand, we want them to work for as long as possible. What is the point? Antibiotics are a special drug. If one is treating hypertension or lowering one's cholesterol too high, that is one's business. This is not the case with antibiotics. Antibiotics are an asset for all of us. I've already explained what this is all about. An antibiotic does not work on the person who takes it, but on the microorganism. The essence of antibiotic use is selective selective toxicity. That is, they are actually poisons for the bacteria, while for us, ideally, these antibiotics should be completely harmless. And this can be achieved, for the reason that bacteria, fortunately, are very different from us, so we can disrupt their metabolism or structures that are not present in our body (such as the cell wall). The cell wall we don't have, otherwise we wouldn't be able to move. So we can destroy it with impunity, damage it (this is how beta-lactams or vancomycin work), and it will effectively deprive the bacterium of life. When we give an antibiotic, we create selection pressure, that is, those bacteria that are susceptible to the antibiotic die, but those that are resistant multiply and begin to dominate. After some time, after a number of antibiotic treatments, we see that there are more and more of these antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the environment, and fewer and fewer of the susceptible...
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