Growing Antibiotic Resistance

Denise Grady, NY Times
March 5, 2013
 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/health/deadly-drug-resistant-infections-rise-in-hospitals-report-warns.html?ref=science&_r=1&

Summary:

Antibiotic resistance is bacteria's ability to resist antibiotics.  The resistance to antibiotics is on the rise, resistance occurs when a bacteria is introduced to an antibiotic, and the few bacteria that survive live on and reproduce, while passing on their trait for resistance to their offspring.  When antibiotics are over used, the amount of resistance increases.  This has been a huge problem recently, due to the discovery of antibiotics and overuse of them in the past hundred years without fully understanding their mechanism of action first.  Many bacterial infections that were once easily treated with antibiotics have mutated to be resistant, giving anyone infected a much lower chance of survival.  One particular strain of bacteria, Klebsiella, has been dubbed the "nightmare bacteria", due to its resistance to the group of antibiotics called carbapenems, often used as a last resort. A large increase in cases of infections of this bacteria has occurred across the United States in the last few years, and due to its resistance there is no treatment for patients infected.

Connection:

This article relates to our current units in multiple ways.  It deals with bacteria, a microbe, which we have been studying.  We've also studied antibiotic resistance, and the bacteria's adaptation of the resistance trait connects to evolution too.