The emergence of resistant bacteria.
After the discovery of penicillin, penicillin began to be used all over the world against various diseases, including those of a non-bacterial nature. Penicillin was considered a "miracle" medicine that could cure any disease. Shortly after the discovery of penicillin, in 1943, Albert Schatz, a young employee in Zelman Waxman’s laboratory, discovered streptomycin. Streptomycin has proven to be an effective antibiotic against tuberculosis and other severe bacterial infections. Humanity has not thought about such irresponsible use of antibiotics. In the 1970s, cases were discovered where antibiotics have failed against gonorrhea and meningococcal infections.
It should be clearly understood that bacteria are living organisms, and like any living system, they are capable of adapting. For example, bacteria have adapted to the antibiotic linezolid in 50 years. Different bacteria adapt in different ways to the action of antibiotics. For example, Campylobacterjejuni can simply pump antibiotics out of the cell using pumps that are protein-based. Bacteria can also strengthen the cell wall, destroy the drug, and change the conformation of the cell wall channels.
One of the ways in which antibiotic resistance occurs.
In the past decade, large pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, Eli Lillyand Company and Bristol-Myers Squibb have closed their antibiotic projects. There may be several reasons, firstly, in our time, it is almost impossible to find new types of antibiotics. to which bacteria are not resistant, another reason may be contributions to other health care areas that look more promising. Despite this, it is sometimes possible to discover new types of antibiotics, but unfortunately testing new antibiotics takes a lot of time and resources. To detect new antibiotics, they use: microbiological, genetic, chemical methods.
COVID-19 is a potentially severe acute respiratory infection caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. It is a dangerous disease that can occur both in the form of an acute respiratory viral infection of a mild course, and in a severe form.
Today the bat is believed to be the primary source of the virus. The incubation period for COVID-19 is 14 days, in rare cases up to 40 days. The average incubation period is 5.1 days. The first symptoms appear within 2.2 days - 2.5%, 11.5 days - 97.5%.
It can be transmitted by transmission, contact, and airborne droplets. Most of all, the virus spreads when sneezing, coughing, with the help of moisture particles within a radius of 2 meters. The susceptible organism can become infected by air or contact if the source is on the surface.
Symptoms for COVID-19 are diverse, with the most common symptoms being fever, weakness, and dry cough, loss of appetite, shortness of breath, wet cough, and muscle pain.
Other symptoms may also appear, such as: rhinorrhea, throat pain, headaches, nausea, and diarrhea. Table 1 shows that the most common symptom is fever, but even this indicator is not reliable.
Most patients suffer from COVID-19 in a mild form, although the virus poses a serious epidemic danger. The mild form is found in 81%, the acute form is 14%, and the critical condition is 5%. The course of the disease is possible in an asymptomatic form. Mortality depends on many factors: gender, age, social status, physical development. The highest mortality occurs in people over 80 years old - 15%, 70-79 years old - 8%. There are also critical conditions in infants and newborns.
Antibiotic use for COVID-19 pandemics. Influence on the course of the disease
A pandemic was declared on March 11, 2020. Along with the pandemic, antibiotic use has increased. A large number of antibiotics have been used over the counter for prevention. Also known are the mass prescriptions of antibiotics for patients with COVID-19, in order to prevent a bacterial infectious process. In Kazakhstan, about 50-80% of patients are treated with antibiotics; about 72% of patients are prescribed azithromycin. According to official WHO statistics, 72% of COVID-19 patients were prescribed antibiotics. When prescribing antibiotics to patients with coronavirus infection, you should know that antibiotics do not fight against viruses; the purpose of prescribing antibiotics is to prevent bacterial infections that occur against the background of weakened immunity. With COVID-19, a bacterial infection develops in 7-8% of patients. It is for this reason that WHO recommended that antibiotics be prescribed only when bacterial infections occur.
The widespread use of antibiotics during pandemics has created bacteria resistant to many antibiotics. Also during the observation it became known that the use of antibiotics leads to the occurrence. The acute form of COVID-19 is 1.5 times more likely than in normal situations, it became known from a study by Huazhong University of Science and Technology led by Changjun Li. The authors of the study examined the data of more than 1.5 thousand patients. All patients were in moderate severity. 996 patients were prescribed antibiotics and the rest were not. COVID-19 passed into a severe stage in 36% of patients in the first group, and in 22% of the second. Patients who immediately received antibiotics were hospitalized for about 18 days, the second group was 13. Also interesting is the fact that patients taking antibiotics were more likely to have a concomitant bacterial infection.
Severe recovery is associated with side effects of antibiotics, primarily on the gastrointestinal tract, liver, cardiovascular system, etc.
The result of the appearance of «superbacteria». Misuse of antibiotics leads to the development of resistant bacteria. Nowadays there is such a thing as "superbacteria», the so-called bacteria resistant to antibiotics. At this time, the most resistant bacteria include:
-Methicillin- resistant Staphylococcus aureus (Staphylococcusaureus, MRSA)
-Vancomycin- resistant enterococcus (Enterococcusfaecium)
- Intestinal stick (Escherichiacoli) resistant to 3rd generation cephalosporins
-Klebsiella pneumoniae (Klebsiellapneumoniae) resistant to 3rd generation cephalosporins
-Pseudomonas aeruginosa, carbapenem-resistant
More and more resistant pathogens of tuberculosis, gonorrhea, pneumonia appear, which in turn causes great problems with treatment. The emergence of "Superbacteria» leads to longer hospitalizations, higher medical costs, and high mortality.
