Why is it possible to cure some bacterial infection but not viral infection?

Answer 1

Also most common viruses mutate easily due to having RNA instead of DNA and just when your immune system can kill the old one a new one pops up due to mutation. Fun. Which is why the common cold, flu and any viral infection is such fun. Antibiotics help your immune system track down bacteria by basically putting a giant flag reading "kill this" on them. Viruses- because they are pretty much an envelope with DNA inside- can't be flagged by antibiotics.

Answer 2

All bacterial infections are treatable and generally cured with antibiotics. There are a few antiviral drugs available but they aren't very effective because viruses mutate very quickly. There are millions of viruses, many not even identified as to type. Viral infections aren't usually as acute as bacterial infections.

Answer 3

The short answer is that antibiotics are effective against bacteria but not viruses. Bacteria are "animals" in the sense that they have all of the genes (information in their chromosomes) necessary to synthesize their own structural parts such as their cell wall and the machinery such as mitochondria that extract energy from food. Bacteria "eat".

Viruses don't "eat". A virus is a bundled set of genes that break into a host's cell and then use the host's machinery to reproduce themselves.

The bacteria's complex machinery can be disrupted in many ways and scientists who design new antibiotics study the bacteria's biochemical functions and attempt to identify a bacteria's vulnerabilities. A chemical that injures or kills the bacteria but does not harm the host may become a new antibiotic.

For example, the penicillin antibiotics interfere with the bacteria's effort to build its cell wall. Human cells have no cell wall so penicillin does not interfere in this way with human cells but the bacteria is doomed when it tries to divide into two daughter cells.

A virus (chicken pox, common cold, HIV, rabies) uses its host cell's biochemical machinery so the virus has little or no biochemucal machionery that offer scientists an angle of attack.

Answer 4

Antibiotics can kill bacteria but not viruses. Have you ever heard the old saying "no cure for the common cold"? That is because a cold is caused by a virus and we don't have any way to kill those yet.

Answer 5

Bacteria being alive can have their biological processes interferred with, antibiotics do this.

Viruses depend on host cells to replicate so it is hard to target them...this is why they are not considered to be alive(can't self replicate) If the virus gets into your system they reside in your own cells and your body is not to keen on attacking itself so it takes time for the body to recognize the re is an issue and actually destroy the body's own cells.

Viruses CAN be immunized against (Polio, Hepatitis, ect.) but this only prevents them from being able to take hold in your own cells in the first place. If they cannot take hold they can't replicate and "die"

Answer 6

they are different life forms.
Among other things, bacteria have no cell wall and viruses do. . . there are many many differences.

Answer 7

viruses aren't technically alive, so you can't "cure" them or "kill" them. they also mutate so much that it's hard to keep up with them.