|
|
|
Does Someone You Care About Have Anorexia?
Anorexia is an eating disorder that develops when someone stops
eating enough food for adequate nutrition. It can happen slowly,
over several months or even years, as when some people grow
older or develop an underlying disease like cancer. As...
Gymnema Sylvestre - Helps to Normal Blood Sugar level
Gymnema Sylvestre
Gymnema is a plant used medicinally in India and
Southeast Asia for treatment of "sweet urine" or what we refer
to in the West as diabetes or hyperglycemia. In ancient Indian
texts, gymnema is referred to as gurmar,...
Sweet Story of Healing
In a time not too long ago, there lived a little girl named Lindsey. (Real story.) She was born on the pale side of health and never seemed to get better. At six she was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. Then began the scramble to save her life....
Top 10 Do's For Women With type II Diabetes
It has been observed that women who are diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes are overweight. The exact cause of this type of diabetes is unclear, but it does appear to be associated with weight gain. In fact, a sedentary lifestyle, along with poor dietary...
What Is The West Nile Virus
The West Nile virus is passed to humans by the bite of an
infected mosquito. The symptoms are: fever, headache, muscle
aches, and loss of appetite. The symptoms can last 3 to 6 days.
Other symptoms might be nausea, vomiting, rash on the...
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Antibiotics 101- What You Absolutely Need to Know
Introduction
Antibiotics are said to be the greatest contribution of modern day science helping the doctors to think beyond microorganinsms.their importance is felt much more in developing countries where the infections are prevalent. There is a mushrooming of antibiotics since last few decades because of both the need and the demand of aseptic conditions both in and out of the hospital.
What are antibiotics?
Antibiotics are chemical or biological substances either produced by microorganisms or are produced artificially to kill or inhibit the growth of other microorganisms. They are used at very low concentrations.
What are different types?
As there are innumerable antibiotics that are presently in use, different people classify them differently for e.g. those that kill or those just inhibit the action of the microorganisms, according to their chemical nature, according to the types of organisms they kill, according to the no of different types of microorganisms, their mechanism of action and so hence and so forth.
Hence sulfadiazine and others are sulfonamides while isoniazid is nicotinic acid derivatives, etc. tetracyclines are bacteriostatic while vancomycin is bactericidal.
How do they work?
Some antibiotics for e.g. penicillins inhibit the cell wall synthesis of the bacteria, some like acyclovir inhibit the DNA synthesis, some like sulfonamides interfere with the metabolism and still others like tetracyclines inhibit protein synthesis. Similarly there are many others with different mechanism of action meant to be targeted at specific function of the bacteria or virus.
Is there any need for them?
After their discovery and
then introduction into the world of medicine , initially they were used judicially but nowadays as more and more antibiotics are being developed and there has been a pressure over the physicians for an aseptic environment , these type of drugs seem to be overused. This has caused many fold problems. One problem is of toxicity that means that if the dose is much larger than expected then it may lead to accumulation in the body and may even lead to death in some cases. Second problem is of hypersensitivity, which means that certain antibiotics for e.g. penicillins can cause hypersensitive reactions in the body, which at times may be quite severe. But the most important problem and the problem, which has attracted much concern among the medical fraternity, is that of resistance. Certain microorganisms for e.g. Staphylococcus are known to get quick resistance against the antibiotics and you need to be cautious before using them blindly.
What do we mean by resistance?
By resistance we mean that a microorganism is either not responding or responding minimally to an antibiotic to which that microorganism used to respond earlier. There are numerous mechanisms by which they develop resistance and this may be making themselves impermeable to the drugs or making them inactive or mutating themselves, etc.
What is the latest research going on?
At present the latest research that is going on is to how to reduce the use of antibiotics by using them judicially so that the microbes might not fall to the prey of resistance and then be of no use to us.
About the Author
Mansi gupta writes about Antibiotics topics.
|
|
|
|
|
| National Library of Medicine - National Institutes of Health |
| Part of the National Institutes of Health, the National Library of Medicine offers access to health information for consumer, patient, and physicians ... |
| www.nlm.nih.gov |
|
| Health and Medical Information produced by doctors - MedicineNet.com |
| Doctor-produced health and medical information written for you to make informed decisions about your health concerns. |
| www.medicinenet.com |
|
| Medicine in the Yahoo! Directory |
| Collection of sites for health professionals, with sections on specific disciplines, organizations, continuing education, conferences, publications, ... |
| dir.yahoo.com |
|
| MedlinePlus Health Information from the National Library of Medicine |
| Health information from the National Library of Medicine. Easy access to Medline and Health topics, medical dictionaries, directories and publications. |
| medlineplus.gov |
|
| Medicine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| Medicine is a branch of health science and the sector of public life ... The practice of medicine combines both science as the evidence base and art in the ... |
| en.wikipedia.org |
|
| Journal Home - Nature Medicine |
| Nature Medicine has a vacancy for a Locum Assistant Editor for six months. The position involves working in all aspects of the editorial process, ... |
| www.nature.com |
|
| The New England Journal of Medicine: Research & Review Articles on ... |
| The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) is a weekly general medical journal that publishes new medical research findings, review articles, and editorial ... |
| content.nejm.org |
|
| eMedicine Clinical Knowledge Base |
| eMedicine features up-to-date, searchable, peer-reviewed medical journals, online physician reference textbooks, and a full-text article database in 62 ... |
| www.emedicine.com |
|
| Open Directory - Health: Medicine |
| the entire directory, only in Health/Medicine. Top: Health: Medicine (11429). Description · Medical Specialties (4888); Surgery (2265) ... |
| dmoz.org |
|
| the www virtual library biosciences medicine |
| www.ohsu.edu/cliniweb/wwwvl/ - Similar pages |
|
|
| Medicine - home |
| Bimonthly journal covering the latest results in clinical investigation relevant to hospital and office practice. |
| www.md-journal.com |
|
| Institute of Medicine |
| The Institute of Medicine serves as adviser to the nation to improve health. |
| www.iom.edu |
|
| ScienceDaily: Health & Medicine News |
| Medical Research News. Health news on everything from cancer to nutrition. Full-text, images, updated daily. |
| www.sciencedaily.com |
|
| Google Directory - Health > Medicine |
| Search only in Medicine Search the Web. Medicine. Health > Medicine, Go to Directory Home. Categories. Alternative Medicine (6308) Basic Sciences (66) ... |
| www.google.com |
|
| the world wide web virtual library biosciences medicine |
| www.mcb.harvard.edu/biopages/medicine.html - Similar pages |
|
|
| PLoS Medicine - A Peer-Reviewed Open-Access Journal |
| PLoS Medicine is a peer-reviewed, international, open-access journal published ... Every issue of PLoS Medicine contains a selection of readers' responses. ... |
| medicine.plosjournals.org |
|
| Medicine On-Line - Medicine Online -The International Medical Journal |
| Medicine Online - independent and peer reviewed journal published by Priory Medical Journals - priory.com. |
| www.priory.com |
|
| Entrez PubMed |
| PubMed is a service of the US National Library of Medicine that includes over 16 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for ... |
| www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov |
|
| Stanford University School of Medicine |
| Home Page of the Stanford University School of Medicine. |
| med.stanford.edu |
|
| Medicine OnLine |
| Meds.com offers medical information and education on cancer (lung cancer, colon cancer, breast cancer, leukemia) and HIV / AIDS for patients, ... |
| www.meds.com |
|
|