EXOGENOUS BACTERIA AND DISEASE

A number of major diseases are caused by exogenous bacteria-gonorrhea, meningitis, tetanus, and syphilis, to name just a few. Other bacteria cannot say here there are too much. Some of these are being brought under control, thanks to antibiotics –a group of drugs that destroy or inhibit the growth of diseases –causing bacteria . The bacterium that causes tuberculosis is an example ; in the 1930s about 80% of all Americans became invented with it before they were twenty years old , but today less than 5% become infected in most parts of the U.S. though there has been an upsurge of the disease in some metropolitan areas.

Legionella pnemophila is another example : once expert figured out the link between this microbe and Legionnaire’s disease, they determined that it could be controlled with the antibiotic erythromycin.

But there is an ominous new trend : many bacteria have now developed resistance to antibiotics, About forty times as much penicillin is needed now to treat some infections as was needed when the drug was treat some infections as was needed when the drug was first used during World War II. Ominous, too, is the recent upsurge in certain bacterial sexually transmitted diseases, some of which are resistant to antibiotics .