Drugs

• Drug


  Any substance taken into the body that modifies or affects chemical reactions in the body
• Reasons for taking recreational drugs


  • Relaxation
  • Stimulation
  • Hallucination
• Medicinal drugs


  Help to relieve symptoms and fight disease
• Antibiotics


  A class of medicinal drugs used to treat bacterial infections
• Antibiotics


  • The vast majority of bacteria are either harmless or beneficial, but a small proportion are pathogenic and may cause harm to the host if allowed to proliferate
  • Some antibiotics like penicillin kill bacteria by destroying the bacterial cell wall
  • Others interfere with the ability of the bacteria to reproduce or synthesize proteins
  • Animal cells have no cell wall and the structures involved in protein synthesis are different, so only bacterial cells are damaged when antibiotics are taken
• Not all bacteria are killed by antibiotics as some strains have developed a resistance
• Viruses are unaffected by antibiotics as they don't have bacterial features
• Development of antibiotic resistance


  1. Bacterium mutates and develops features that allow it to survive

  2. Bacterium divides, leading to the buildup of a resistant population
• MRSA is an example of a type of bacteria that has developed resistance to several widely used antibiotics
• Completing a full course of antibiotics


  Reduces the number of bacteria that survive and stand the chance of developing resistance
• The more a strain of bacteria is exposed to a specific antibiotic


  The greater the likelihood that a mutation will occur
• Antibiotics should only be used when necessary, not for viral infections like the common cold