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Antibiotics Are Aging, And Bacteria Are Learning To Fight Them Off

Last month brought fresh evidence that while small, bacteria can certainly look out for themselves.

Costridium difficile, a microbe that can cause serious digestive illness and death in vulnerable patients in hospitals and nursing homes, was blamed by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for doing just that in four states.

Like many other germs, it apparently had mutated, under pressure from antibiotics, into a toxic new strain.

What has exacerbated matters is Americans' well-documented tendency to think they need an antibiotic for every cold or cough or child's sore throat or earache. And physicians tend to go along, arguing that they don't have time to educate patients on the folly of taking an antibiotic.

The larger the quantity of antibiotics prescribed, the greater the opportunity for bacteria to form resistant mutations.

To read this article in its entirety, click on Bugs Behaving Badly.

posted by Mike @ 7:45 AM