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Shayla Cunico
Professor Brian Hendrickson
English 110
16 November 2015
Prescription Drug Abuse: Antibiotic Edition

Whenever you think of prescription drug abuse, you probably think

of painkillers, such as vicodin or oxycontin, most people dont realize
that the abuse of antibiotics are just as dangerous. The abuse of
antibiotic drugs is not only harmful to you but can affect the
community as a whole. You might be asking yourself, how can
someone abuse antibiotics in the first place?

Introduction
In this article we will be discussing a different kind of prescription
drug abuse, antibiotic drug abuse. A form of prescription drug abuse
that many people may not recognize as that big of a problem. I will go
into discussion about good and bad bacteria, and what each of those
means. Furthermore I will explain the resistance that is forming
towards antibiotics due to the drug abuse, how it can be stopped and
why it should. I will also relate it to everyday scenarios to help better
explain.

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Abstract
I started to babysit when I was about 14 years old, just on the
weekends for friends and family. I used to constantly worry if
something was too dirty for a child to play with or put in their mouths. I
was just a huge worrywart, and clean freak wondering if the children I
was babysitting were going to get sick.
Lets take the infamous five second rule for example. Lets say I
drop a pacifier, if I pick it up before five seconds its still okay to give
back to the child. I began questioning that theory and decided that
cannot be very sanitary. So, one day I decided to ask my mom how to
better protect the children from bacteria and germs. She explained
that some germs can be good for you, kids need to eat a little dirt and
glue (jokingly of course) to really boots their immune system and help
their body to learn to fight off infection. From that day on it all made
sense. I started to understand that if you keep a child in a germless
bubble their whole lives the second they break out of the perfect germ
free bubble they are not going to have the immune strength to fight off
any sort of bad germs they come in contact with, due to the fact that
they have never been exposed to anything like it before.

Background
First, you have to understand how antibiotics work. Alexander
Fleming discovered the first antibiotic, you may have even heard about

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it before: its penicillin. Antibiotics were first created in the early
1900s, a great break through in the world of medicine. Antibiotics are
chemicals that kill or inhibit the growth of bacteria and are used to
treat bacterial infections. (Antibiotics, microbiology online.)
Antibiotics find the weakness in the infectious cell, and attack that
weak spot. These antibiotics either kill the host cell (a living cell in
which a virus multiplies.), or prevent the host cell from multiplying.
Your body has tons of tiny microorganisms that help your body to
live and grow. The human body has good and bad bacteria. You have
bacteria that help to break down food and helps with the process of
digestion, and helps to keep everything internally healthy and running
smoothly, thats good bacteria. Then you have harmful bacteria, the
bacteria that make food spoil, and bacteria that makes you sick. (The
Bad Bacteria) You can definitely do without the bad bacteria, but the
good bacteria are a must. These helpful bacteria are called probiotics.
If something happens to your good bacteria you can take probiotic
strain supplements, which help to reboot those good bacteria strains
that help to keep you healthy.

Explanation
As you would expect antibiotics have a link to bacteria. With this
being said, most people dont know that antibiotics dont fight off viral
diseases such as the common cold, influenza, coughs, sore throats,

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stomach flu and bronchitis. They do kill off the good bacteria that are
trying to lead the fight against the viral infection. So if youre misusing
the antibiotics to try to fight off the viral infection, youre actually
doing more damage then helping. Now you have two bad guys fighting
against you.
Weve all done it before. Lets say your child gets sick, and of
course you want them to get better, so you go to the doctor and put a
little bit of pressure on them to prescribe you antibiotics and they do
and everyone is happy go lucky right? Wrong. When some one over
uses or improperly uses antibiotics, they create a resistance to the
antibiotics. Which causes a huge problem. When you actually need the
power of antibiotics, but you have abused the power of them, what is
going to protect you?
Lets use vaccinations as an example. When you get injected with
the MMR vaccine, you get a microscopic dose of dead MMR. This helps
your body to recognize and creates immunity against MMR, so your
body knows how to better fight off the disease if it is ever contracted.
Every time you expose your immune system to a little bit of bacteria
its great for the body! It helps to keep the immune system up and
running, making it aware of its surroundings and ready to fight off a
disease at any given time.
When you take antibiotics not only do you kill the bad bacteria, you
also take out the bacteria on your side, the ones fighting for you. When

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you abuse antibiotics you essentially kill off your immune system,
which is definitely not a good thing. If youre not replenishing those
good bacteria with probiotic strains then next time you get sick youre
going to be in a sticky situation that couldve very much been
prevented.

Antibiotic resistance an overview

The problem we have created is called antibiotic resistant bacteria. An
antibiotic resistant bacteria is a microorganism that is virtually
invincible, they cannot be controlled or killed by the use of antibiotics.
Which is not something that you want in the world of medicine. Most
bacteria are just resistant to one type of antibiotic, but there are
bacteria that are resistant to multiple antibiotics called multi-resistant
organisms. ("AntibioticResistantBacteria.")Antibioticresistantorganismscancause
ahugeproblemintheworldofpublichealth.
In medicine, bacteria and other germs are said to be resistant if
they are able to survive exposure to otherwise harmful things. (Using
Medication: Using Antibiotics Correctly and Avoiding Resistance). When
a bacterium becomes resistant they are able to multiply freely, and can
cause harm if they multiply too much. There is also a type of antibiotic
called "broad-spectrum" antibiotics. This antibiotic can fight off a
spectrum of bad bacteria that can cause you to fall ill. If not used
properly a vide spectrum can become resistant to that antibiotic.

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Prevention
The prevention of creating antibiotic resistant organisms can be put to
an end. Although some bacteria are already resistant to certain
antibiotics, we can help to prevent the creation and contribution to the
resistant bacteria. We can start with prevention by correctly using our
prescribed antibiotics, considering that the misuse can but yourself
and others in danger. We can make sure to take the entire course of
the prescription and not to stop treatment when the illness starts to
fade. We can help to educate people what antibiotics help to treat and
what they have no affect on such as viruses. That includes coughs,
colds, and influenza.

Conclusion
The overuse of antibiotics is a huge problem that still happens quite
often. To protect the public and keep them healthy we need to make
changes regarding the way in which we handle and consume our
antibiotics. We need to start with the way they are prescribed. Doctors
may pre prescribe antibiotics before receiving test results that can
cause the misuse of antibiotics that contributes to drug resistant
bacteria. Another problem we need to resolve is the way people
pressure doctors for antibiotics. We need to educate the people may
take antibiotics purchased via the internet after self- diagnosing them

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selves and we need to prevent the people that may take left over
antibiotics from a previous prescription. (Consumer Health) If we can
educate the public on why antibiotic drug abuse is becoming a large
problem in todays society, many people might stop abusing and learn
how to correctly use them to help them instead do unknown harm to
themselves down the road.

Bibliography
"AntibioticResistantBacteria."BetterHealthChannel.Web.17Nov.2015.
"Antibiotics."MicrobiologyOnline.Web.17Nov.2015.

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"ConsumerHealth."Antibiotics:MisusePutsYouandOthersatRisk.Web.17Nov.
2015.
"TheBadBacteriaBacteriaAllAboutMicrobesMicrobeMagic."TheBadBacteria
BacteriaAllAboutMicrobesMicrobeMagic.Web.17Nov.2015.
"UsingMedication:UsingAntibioticsCorrectlyandAvoidingResistance."Using
Medication:UsingAntibioticsCorrectlyandAvoidingResistance.U.S.NationalLibrary
ofMedicine.Web.17Nov.2015.