Antibiotics are medicines that kill bacteria or inhibit their growth. This makes them an important medical weapon in the fight against bacterial diseases in both humans and animals. Antibiotics are used against bacterial infections such as blood poisoning or pneumonia. If the immune system is weakened, antibiotics can also be prescribed as a preventive measure to protect against infections.

There are different classes of antibiotics with different mechanisms of action. Each class of antibiotics attacks bacteria in a different way. Some prevent bacteria from synthesising new cell walls, while others block the transmission of genetic information during replication. Bacteria can get used to antibiotics and become resistant, i.e. insensitive, to antibiotics. That’s how antibiotics lose their effectiveness.

Antibiotics are prescription-only drugs that prevent the growth of bacteria or kill them. Antibiotics only work against bacteria. They are useless against viruses, fungi and parasites, which can cause many different diseases in humans and animals. This makes it important for antibiotics to be prescribed for bacterial infections only.

Antibiotic resistance means that bacteria are unaffected by antibiotics. Bacteria have the ability to adapt quickly to their environment. Although this is a natural process, it also means they can get used to antibiotics and become resistant to them. The antibiotics then lose their effectiveness as a medicine. This unwanted adaptation process is helped and speeded up if antibiotics are used too often or wrongly.

So it is not people or animals that become resistant to antibiotics, but the bacteria. The resistant microbes are able to multiply very rapidly and can actually pass the resistance on to other bacteria. Since bacteria occur almost everywhere, they are easily transferred from one human being to another, or from an animal to a human and vice versa. If resistant bacteria cause a disease in humans or animals, it can be difficult or impossible to treat. In the worst-case scenario, it may even lead to death.

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Development of resistance is a natural phenomenon that has existed since time immemorial. Resistance can result from changes in the bacterium’s own genome or if resistant genes are received from other bacteria.

Compared with non-resistant bacteria, resistant bacteria are more likely to have difficulty establishing themselves under normal circumstances because they are less robust. Wherever antibiotics are used, however, resistant bacteria gain a survival advantage over non-resistant microbes. They are able to survive and replicate themselves. The increased use of antibiotics in human and veterinary medicine has accelerated the spread of antibiotic resistance.

Antibiotics are an important pillar of modern medicine. If they lose their effectiveness, there are far-reaching consequences for humans and animals. For example, bacterial infections involving resistant microbes take longer to treat or may be untreatable in certain cases.

Resistance can cause higher costs in human and veterinary medicine as well as agriculture, and may make the disease more acute or even result in death. People or animals that have never had antibiotics in their life can also fall victim to an infection with resistant bacteria. The sharp increase we are seeing in antibiotic resistance worldwide is a very worrying phenomenon.

Numerous bacteria can be transmitted between humans, animals and the environment, including resistant microbes. This means that antibiotic-resistant bacteria are of concern to everyone – whether or not an individual person or animal has ever been treated before with antibiotics.

Antibiotics are used to treat both people and animals. This makes a comprehensive approach essential when addressing the problem of antibiotic resistance, one that takes into account all the factors that may influence the development of resistance…find out more