Antibiotics/antibacterial drug use, their marketing and promotion during the post-antibiotic golden age and their role in emergence of bacterial resistance

Abstract

During the post-antibiotic golden age, it has seen a massive antibiotic/antibacterial production and an increase in irrational use of these few existing drugs in the medical and veterinary practice, food industries, tissue cultures, agriculture and commercial ethanol production globally. The irrational drug use has been further exacerbated by the increased marketing and promotion of these drugs by the pharmaceutical companies thus increasing their accessibility in the public and hence their improper use. The lack of production and introduction of the newer and effective antibiotic/antibacterial drugs in clinical practice in the post-antibiotic golden age has seen an increase in the emergence of the resistant pathogenic bacterial infections creating a significant problem in the global health of humankind. The massive productions of the antibiotic/antibacterial drugs have contributed to the poor disposal of these drugs and hence many of them are discharged in various water bodies contributing to the environmental antibiotic/antibacterial drug pollution. In the environment, these drugs exert pressure on the environmental bacteria by destroying useful bacteria that are responsible for the recycling of the organic matter and as well as promoting the selection of the resistant pathogenic bacteria that can spread in human and animal population thus causing an increase in the observed bacterial disease burden and hence a significant global public health problem. The resistant bacterial diseases lead to the high cost, increased occurrence of adverse drug reactions, prolonged hospitalization, the exposure to the second-and third-line drugs like in MDR-TB and XDR-TB that leads to toxicity and deaths as well as the increased poor production in agriculture and animal industry and commercial ethanol production.

Fast and reliable determination of Escherichia coli susceptibility to antibiotics: Infrared microscopy in tandem with machine learning algorithms

“…Previous studies have used this technique successfully for taxonomic classification of different bacterial and fungal strains resulted from minor molecular changes . Bacterial susceptibility to antibiotics may be manifested in minor molecular and biochemical changes in the bacterial cells . Recently, Lechowicz et al, reported that FTIR microcopy combined with multivariate analysis methods has a great potential for classification UPEC strains' susceptibility to cephalothin .…”

Evaluating the reliability and accuracy of the promotional brochures for the generic pharmaceutical companies in Iraq using World Health Organization guidelines

“…This study showed that most medical brochures were focusing on treating cardiovascular, gastrointestinal and respiratory diseases, similarly brochures in Nepal focus mainly on cardiovascular drugs, ulcer healing drugs and those for treating respiratory disorders,[ 12 ] additionally it was found in this study that antibiotics were present in 20% of examined brochures, this may be because antibiotics are one of the most commonly dispensed medications in hospital setting,[ 13 ] and since antibiotics considered as prescription only medications so it is reasonable to find that antibiotics are the most commonly promoted drugs to physicians. [ 14 ]…”

Biofunctionalization of Natural Fiber-Reinforced Biocomposites for Biomedical Applications

“…Ultimately, the effective action against these targets inhibits bacteria growth, compromises the cell integrity and, finally, leads to cell death [119,120]. The structural and metabolic differences between bacteria and mammalian cells enables antibiotics to induce selective toxicity against pathogens without harming the host cells [121]. The discovery of penicillin and streptomycin in 1929 and 1943, respectively, foreshadowed the age of antibiotics [117].…”