Antibiotics. What are they?
We are fortunate to live in the era after dozens of scientific and medical breakthroughs. We benefit every day from the advancements in medicine. People that lived in the pre-antibiotic era could only dream of where we are today. We take modern medicine for granted all the time. In today’s society whenever we get sick we can take over-the-counter medication that will alleviate our symptoms while our immune system fights off the illness. In some cases, if the illness is too powerful, we take antibiotics. After taking the prescribed amount in full, we usually start to feel much better and we kind-of forget we were ever sick in the first place. Close to a hundred years ago that story would have ended very differently.
Minor illness like the common cold or sinus infections, at one time in history, were deadly. People didn’t always have the luxury of antibiotics. The discovery of them changed history forever. Antibiotics completely revolutionized the way we think, handle and treat bacterial infections.
In 1928, a Scottish scientist by the name Alexander Fleming discovered the antibacterial compound, that he later called penicillin, almost by accident. Viewing a petri dish, Fleming noticed that “at the edge of the of the dish was a colony of mold and around it was a halo which the staphylococcus bacteria dotted the rest of the dish were conspicuously absent.” He continued to investigate the mold Penicillium notatum and from it created penicillin, the worlds first antibiotic.
The Invention of penicillin came at a curtal time in US history. Even though it wasn’t until ten years later that the drug had its first clinical trial. Penicillin absorbed all of the limelight during World War II. Production of penicillin sky-rocketed during the war because of its life-saving components. Thousands of soldiers lives were being saved because infections started being treated with penicillin. Wounds on soldiers’ bodies would get infected very easily. After some time the infection would most likely go septic, meaning it reached the bloodstream and would go viral in a body. Even today when an infection goes septic it’s hard to treat. Penicillin prevented infections from going septic thus saving the lives of many.
It was viewed as the miracle drug once it became available to the general public. And it still is today, although we have many other antibiotics now. Without antibiotics, doctors around the world would not be able to perform complex surgeries like organ transplants, joint replacement or cardiac procedures. Antibiotic therapy before and after surgery greatly decreases the risk of infections for patients. Without them, opening the body to an environment filled with billions of microorganisms and not seeing later complications would be very difficult.
In the United States antibiotics have single-handily increased life expectancy from 56 years of age in the 1920’s to almost 80 years. In developing countries, antibiotics decrease the morbidity and mortality from illness caused by food-borne pathogens and illness linked to poor sanitation conditions.
With a clear understanding of who discovered antibiotics and what they do for us, let’s begin to uncover what they really are. Starting at the most concrete level. Why are antibiotics called antibiotics in the first place? Well, the term biotic refers to a living thing, a living thing that has an influence or affects its ecosystem. And the term anti simply refers to against or opposed to. So the term antibiotic means against living or opposed to living. In this context, the living thing would be microorganisms like bacteria.
Antibiotics have the ability to destroy an infective agent without harming the hosts’ cells. This is actually very hard to execute. Creating a drug that is lethal enough to the organism but not the host(human) cells. Instead of trying to find the perfect drug, because no such thing exists, scientists balance drug characteristics against one another and find a compromise. Most antibiotics are made in labs before released to the public but they actually originate from nature. Antibiotics are natural metabolic products of aerobic bacteria and fungi. These natural components inhibit the growth of other microorganisms in the same habitat. When antibiotics come in contact with bacteria, fungi, and protozoa their main goal is the inhibition of cell wall synthesis in the bacterium.
Beta-lactam antibiotics are classified by their four-memberd, nitrogen-containing beta-lactam ring at the core of their structure. Their structure is what gives them their name. Beta-lactam antibiotics target a group of enzymes found anchored in the cell membrane which is involved in the cross-linking of the bacterial cell wall. The beta-lactam ring portion of their structure binds to these different groups of enzymes inhibiting them to perform cell wall synthesis. Forcing the bacterial cell to die. (University of Minnesota, 2017)
In our discussion about antibiotics, we have only explored and explained situations were antibiotics are given to humans. Shortly after the discovery of antibiotics and once their benefits in human life were noticed, farmers wanted to have their livestock treated with antibiotics to treat the illness their animals were dealing with.
Livestock animals are just as susceptible to the infections humans are susceptible to. These antibiotics helped the food industry, but they hurt the efforts of sowing down antibiotic resistance. In my next story, The Dangers of Resistance, I’ll talk about what antibiotic resistance is and how farming in America is fueling it.
