• Question: what is drug resistance?

    Asked by 297drgj36 to Donna, Avril on 9 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: Avril Tucker

      Avril Tucker answered on 9 Jun 2017:

      Very good question! Drug resistance is when a drug (e.g. Antibiotic), which was once effective in treating an infection, no longer works. This can happen if the bacteria mutate or develop mechanisms to stop the antibiotic working. It happens faster if the dose of the antibiotic is too low to kill the bacterial cells. This means the bacteria become exposed to the antibiotic, don’t die, but develop ways of resisting it… even if the dose is then increased. Check out my video on the subject: https://youtu.be/P8ikgCwsjNE

    • Photo: Donna Johnson

      Donna Johnson answered on 10 Jun 2017:

      When a drug doesn’t have the desired effect against an organism. Resistance can come from a few mechanisms. Bacteria can be inherently resistant – something about them stops the drug from working, eg they can have an enzyme that breaks down the drug before it can work or a pump that moves the drug out of the cell before it can work. Bacteria can also become resistant – they can have genes for break down enzymes or other anti-drug genes passed to them from other bacteria or they can have mutations that change the shape of the drugs target or increase the amount of pumps they produce. There can be multiple mechanisms all acting at the same time to make the bacteria resistant to drugs too.

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