Antibioltic questions?

Question

1. Can Antibiotics can help fight viral and bacterial diseases?

2. Do most bacteria cause diseases?

3. How do Antibiotics work?

Answer 1

1. Antibiotics are only effective against bacteria.

2. Most bacteria do not cause diseases. Most bacteria are harmless and many are beneficial.

3. Antibiotics work in a variety of ways (too many to go through in great detail here). Antibiotics work by ihibiting or killing the bacterium. Different antibiotics use different mechanisms to kill the bactierium

Answer 2

An antibiotic is a chemical compound that inhibits or abolishes the growth of microorganisms, such as bacteria, fungi, or protozoans. The original meaning of antibiotic includes any agent with biological activity against living organisms; however, the term is commonly used to refer to substances with anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, or anti-parasitical activity. The first antibiotic compounds used in modern medicine were produced and isolated from living organisms, for example, the penicillin class produced by fungi in the genus Penicillium, or streptomycin from bacteria of the genus Streptomyces. With the advent of organic chemistry many antibiotics are now also obtained by chemical synthesis, such as the sulfa drugs. Many antibiotics are relatively small molecules with a molecular weight less than 2000 Da.
The effectiveness of individual antibiotics varies with the location of the infection, the ability of the antibiotic to reach the site of infection, and the ability of the microbe to inactivate or excrete the antibiotic. Some anti-bacterial antibiotics destroy bacteria (bactericidal), whereas others prevent bacteria from multiplying (bacteriostatic).

There are approximately 10 times as many bacterial cells as human cells in the human body, with large numbers of bacteria on the skin and in the digestive tract. Although the vast majority of these bacteria are rendered harmless or beneficial by the protective effects of the immune system, a few pathogenic bacteria cause infectious diseases, including cholera, syphilis, anthrax, leprosy and bubonic plague. The most common fatal bacterial diseases are respiratory infections, with tuberculosis alone killing about 2 million people a year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.[5] In developed countries, antibiotics are used to treat bacterial infections and in various agricultural processes, so antibiotic resistance is becoming common. In industry, bacteria are important in processes such as wastewater treatment, the production of cheese and yoghurt, and the manufacture of antibiotics and other chemicals.

Bacteria are prokaryotes. Unlike cells of animals and other eukaryotes, bacterial cells do not contain a nucleus and rarely harbour membrane-bound organelles. Although the term bacteria traditionally included all prokaryotes, the scientific classification changed after the discovery in the 1990s that prokaryotic life consists of two very different groups of organisms that evolved independently from an ancient common ancestor. These evolutionary domains are called Bacteria and Archaea.

Answer 3

1. Bacterial, yes. Viral, no (although they often use antibiotics with viral infections to prevent an opportunistic bacterial infections)

2. No.

3. Depends on the antibiotic.

Answer 4

1. antibiotics can only fight bacterial diseases
2. Yes...they can CONTRIBUTE to a diseased state...such as gangrene, bacterial meningitis.
3. They kill the bacteria that it's made to kill...unless it is drug resistant.

Answer 5

Antibiotics kill bacteria only; they are ineffective on viruses.

Diseases are caused by both viruses and bacteria, depends on the disease.

Antibiotics prevent the "reproduction" of the bacteria and kill off existing bacteria.