The Sabermetrics of ABR
Today I am going to explain how antibiotic resistance works. More specifically, I want you to know what happens on a biological level in order to fully understand the process of this condition. Antibiotic resistance (ABR) is when a specific antibiotic has lost its effective power to kill bacteria and prevent that bacterium from spreading. Essentially, the medicine you were taking for an illness no longer works in your body. You might be wondering, “Well, why would the medicine stop working all of a sudden?” That’s an excellent question, and I can perfectly explain the phenomenon.
Some bacteria naturally reject certain strands of antibiotics. Depending on your personal characteristics, some medicines will naturally work for you while others won’t. In the cases where medicine naturally does not work in your body, the antibiotic never stood a chance against the bacterium because the antibiotic’s effectiveness was always going to be denied. In the cases where the medicine originally did work for you, ABR is what caused it to stop being effective. You used too much of the antibiotic or used it improperly, and your body got very used to it. Your body got so used to it that it became ineffective, and you must ultimately find a new alternative. Think of it like a pitcher facing a batter in a baseball game. If you’re the pitcher, imagine you have pitched against the same batter for an entire season. During the first few plate appearances, the batter looked silly hitting the curveball, your best pitch. However, over time the batter has seen your curveball more and more often. Eventually, the batter has seen the curveball so many times that he recognizes it right away, and you can no longer get him out or fool him with that pitch. As a result, the curveball is ineffective against that hitter, and you must find a new pitch to throw to get him out. The curveball represents the equivalent of an antibiotic and the batter is the human body.
On a microscopic level, the reason that the medicine, or curveball, doesn’t work is because the bacteria of the illness have become resistant. Bacteria become resistant through one of two ways: (1) genetic mutation or (2) effects from other bacteria that are already resistant. A mutation is when a specific bacterium alters its genetic material to completely change its identity. When a bacterium mutates, it blocks or inactivates the cell that the antibiotic was going to attack. When this happens, the antibiotic can’t reach its intended cell, and the mutated bacterium, which is now resistant, is left free to wander around the body. On the other hand, when different bacteria mate and share genetic material, the process is called conjugation. In conjugation, the sharing of genetic material includes the sharing of antibiotic resistance genes from one bacterium to the other. When this happens, then you have another entire strand of bacteria that has become resistant and is also multiplying at a rapid rate. This is how multiple types of bacteria begin reproducing hundreds of cells that are all resistant to the same drug. The more these resistant bacteria reproduce, the more cells there are in your body that won’t be affected by that same antibiotic should you need to use it in the future. Remember the batter that you can’t throw the curveball to? Well the reason why the curveball is ineffective against him is not only because he has seen it so many times, although that is the biggest part of it. More specifically, the batter cannot be fazed by the curveball for one of two reasons, either (1) he has changed his approach at the plate or (2) his teammates have helped him overcome it. In the first case, the batter has a new swing that is more level and thus allows him to hit the curveball better. In the second case, the batter’s teammates, who have also seen the curveball a lot, help the batter become better at hitting it by giving him tips on hand configuration, location probabilities, spin recognition, and count tendencies. Both the teammates (other bacteria) and the batter (current bacteria) share these tips, so together they both become resistant to the curveball.
Antibiotic resistance on its surface seems like a very easy process. A person takes an antibiotic, some of the micro parts of the body become resistant to it, especially if that antibiotic is taken often and improperly, and then the body can no longer be healed by that medicine. However, it is actually a very complex system of transferring genetic material between cells and bacteria. Think about the batters sharing tips with each other on how to hit the curveball. ABR is entirely dependent on cell behavior and cell characteristics on a molecular level. The body works very hard to prevent this, but with millions of cells and bacteria, it’s not hard to see how antibiotic resistance has grown. Hopefully this educative post gives a better understanding of how ABR works, but more importantly, I hope it gives you a new appreciation for everything your body does to keep you healthy on a daily basis because it is fighting an uphill battle against ABR.
