What are antibiotics?

Antibiotics are medicines that treat infections caused by bacteria. They can be lifesaving medicines for people suffering from severe bacterial infections. However, their effectiveness is being reduced by inappropriate use, so people are now dying from infections that were previously treatable. Unless we use antibiotics properly, the problem will only get worse, and more people will die unnecessarily.

What’s the difference between bacteria and viruses?

Bacteria and viruses are tiny micro-organisms (germs) that live throughout our environment. Bacteria live outside cells. Viruses invade cells and live within them, and are much smaller than bacteria. Some infections are caused by bacteria; others by viruses.

Why shouldn’t we use antibiotics for viral infections?

Useless
Antibiotics treat only infections caused by bacteria. They have no effect on viruses. Therefore, they cannot treat viral infections, such as the common cold and the flu (influenza).

Antibiotic resistance
When a person has a bacterial infection, they have millions and millions of the bacteria in their body. The individual bacterium vary in their susceptibility to antibiotics: most are susceptible, a few are resistant. When treated with an antibiotic for the first time, most of the bacteria are killed off. However, some of the resistant ones may survive. With each successive exposure to the antibiotic, the more susceptible bacteria are killed off first, leaving the resistant ones. Over time, the proportion of resistant bacteria may increase, until almost all the bacteria are resistant to the antibiotic. When this happens, the bacteria are said to be ‘antibiotic resistant’.

Using a course of antibiotics for a viral infection gives bacteria in the environment another exposure to the antibiotic. As a result, we may make it a tiny bit harder to treat the next infection caused by bacteria, while not achieving any benefits.

Before antibiotics were discovered in the 1930s, more than half of all deaths were caused by bacterial infections. By the late 1960s, antibiotics had been so successful in treating bacterial infections that the US Surgeon-General told the US Senate it was time to ‘close the books on infectious diseases’. Today, some strains of bacteria that cause infections have become resistant to many antibiotics, so people are again dying of infections caused by them. In Australia, antibiotic-resistant bacteria are thought to cause more than 7000 deaths each year.

Side effects
Antibiotics can cause unpleasant side effects, such as stomach upsets, diarrhoea and thrush. The suffering is usually justified because the benefits outweigh the side effects. However, if the treatment is inappropriate in the first place, the suffering is completely unjustified.

Waste of money
Unnecessary use of antibiotics is a waste of money. The National Prescribing Service estimates that more than 3 million antibiotic prescriptions are wasted on viral infections each year. This wastage costs the community millions of dollars — money that could be better spent elsewhere.

What should we do?
Don’t use antibiotics unnecessarily. When consulting a doctor about a cold or the flu, don’t ask for an antibiotic. Save antibiotics for the times when you really need them. That way bacteria won’t become resistant to antibiotics unnecessarily, and we will continue to have effective treatments for them.