MGY277H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Antimicrobial Resistance, World War Ii, Prontosil
1 Dec 2018
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Document Summary
Importance of antimicrobials: before antimicrobials prognosis for people with common diseases was grim (i. e. before penicillin in 1940s, world war ii was the first conflict in history where infectious disease killed fewer soldiers than combat. Development of new drugs: most modern antibiotics come from microorganisms that reside in soil, commercial production involves careful selection of strain grown in large vat using broth medium, when max antibiotic conc. Spectrum of activity: bacteria can be either, broad-spectrum antimicrobials: affect a wide range of microbes. Important for treating acute life-threatening diseases: especially when no time to culture for identification, disadvantage: disrupt normal microbiota that aid in excluding pathogens, narrow-spectrum antimicrobials affect limited range of microbes, requires identification of pathogen, testing for sensitivity. Some drugs interfere with each other, are antagonistic: combinations where one drug enhances are synergistic, combinations that are neither are additive.
