LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Antibiotics: Bacteria
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Antibiotics are strong medicines that can kill bacteria. They have saved many lives and prevented many serious complications. However, antibiotics have no impact on viral infections. One of the more important decisions made daily by every physician is whether a child's infection is viral or bacterial. Parents can learn to make some of these decisions themselves.
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Antibiotics are medicines that are used to fight bacterial infections. [1] There are many types of antibiotics. They can be taken by mouth. They can be injected. They can be put right on the skin, or in the eyes or ears. Some of these drugs should not be taken with food or drinks.
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Antibiotics are not only utilized as a form of medical treatment for humans.... The drugs are also frequently included in the diet of cattle and other farm animals. This controversial practice, which is often carried out even for healthy livestock, is intended to increase the weight of the animals, which correspondingly increases their economic value. For similar monetary reasons, antibiotics are also widely used to treat a number of plant diseases caused by bacterial infections, often enabling farmers to avoid significant crop losses. Yet, although utilization of antibiotics for such purposes may make short-term economic sense, many are skeptical and believe long-term concerns about the increasing immergence of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, which common exposure to antibiotics promotes, should take precedence. For similar reasons, many in the scientific community also find the everyday use of antibiotic soaps and lotions that has arisen among the general public in recent years problematic.
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Antibiotics are either injected, given orally, or applied to the skin in ointment form. Many, while potent anti-infective agents... cause toxic side effects. Some, like penicillin, are highly allergenic and can cause skin rashes, shock, and other manifestations of allergic sensitivity. Others, such as the tetracyclines, cause major changes in the intestinal bacterial population and can result in superinfection by fungi and other microorganisms. Chloramphenicol, which is now restricted in use, produces severe blood diseases, and use of streptomycin can result in ear and kidney damage. Many antibiotics are less effective than formerly because antibiotic-resistant strains of microorganisms have emerged (see drug resistance).
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Antibiotics do not, in themselves, cause resistance. Instead, they allow naturally resistant variants within a population to survive and reproduce while those individuals without the resistance factor die. Once in a bacterial population, antibiotic resistance can spread rapidly. Even unrelated bacteria can gain resistance from their neighbors in a phenomenon called horizontal gene transfer. Resistance to antibiotics is encoded in DNA, the genetic blueprint for life. Bacteria are able to exchange DNA, especially in the form of plasmids (small, self-replicating circles of DNA) and pass resistance very rapidly.
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Antibiotics (prescription or residues in meat & poultry) cause improper or insufficient bacteria in the bowel. The ability of intestinal flora to metabolize nutrients, hormones, bile acids, cholesterol and carcinogens is well established. Over 400 species of microorganism inhabit the healthy human gut and contribute four pounds to overall body weight. The ecology of these microorganisms is very important to the health of the human body. The balance of this ecology can significantly affect lactose tolerance, serum cholesterol levels, tumor growth or suppression, serum steroid hormone levels, immune function, the proliferation of pathogenic organisms in the gut, bowel transit time and other aspects of metabolism. Relatively few bacteria, between 10 and 100 organisms per ml. of stomach contents, are commonly found in the healthy human stomach.
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