Explain why the overprescription of antibiotics by doctors, or th...

Question

Explain why the overprescription of antibiotics by doctors, or the overuse of everyday soaps containing antibiotics, can be a health risk.

Accepted Answer

Hi everyone here's our next problem. Which of the following is a possible consequence of antibiotic overuse. Well let's think this through because bacteria are so susceptible to mutation this is what allows them to adapt so quickly in any population. When you think about the common antibiotics that are used, there's always going to be some bacterial strange strains that are resistant to those common antibiotics. So when you use one of them the susceptible bacteria quickly die off. But the resistant strains or the resistant bacteria survive and reproduce. So now imagine lots of people using antibiotics or maybe they have viral infections, they don't need them and they're being used wisely widely. Well each person is an opportunity for a resistant bacteria to be surviving and reproducing. So if this happens widely in a population you'll have more and more resistant strains that can circulate while the population of susceptible bacteria has been has been killed. So overall the percent of bacteria in the population that are susceptible to the antibiotic will get lower and lower while there's more and more resistant bacteria. So our answer here is choice C it will promote antibiotic resistance. Let's just look through other answer choices. To be thorough choice A. Says the bacteria will recruit other bacteria. That's not our answer. We don't need any other types of bacteria. There just always exist with particularly common antibiotics. A few strains that have developed mutations that allow them to be resistant. Choice B says it will make all bacteria grow faster. This is not correct. The susceptible bacteria will be killed very quickly. Choice D says it will become contagious. Well, antibiotic overuse doesn't affect the contagiousness of the disease. Um It's just allows antibiotic resistant bacteria to become a larger and larger percent of the bacterial population. See you in the next video.

Explain why the overprescription of antibiotics by doctors, or the overuse of everyday soaps containing antibiotics, can be a health risk.

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