Antibiotic Resistance

• Antibiotics are drugs that can be used to treat bacterial infection by killing the bacteria or stopping them from multiplying.
• Antibiotics only work on bacteria
• Bacteria can randomly mutate, meaning they can become resistant to antibiotics
• This means only the non-resistant strains of bacteria will be killed
• The resistant bacteria will survive and reproduce so the population of the resistant strain will increase
• To prevent resistance, you should only get anti-biotics when needed and to always do the full course
• If we use antibiotics too much or incorrectly then this increases the chance of these mutated bacteria surviving and reproducing