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Flashcards · Biology · Defence Against Disease

Antibiotics and Painkillers

16 cards

  1. What do antibiotics do?

    They kill bacteria inside the body, curing bacterial disease.

  2. Give an example of an antibiotic.

    Penicillin.

  3. Why must the right antibiotic be used for a bacterial disease?

    Antibiotics are specific. Each works on certain bacteria only.

  4. Do antibiotics kill viruses?

    No.

  5. Why do antibiotics not kill viruses?

    Viruses live and reproduce inside cells, and do not have the structures that antibiotics attack.

  6. Why is it difficult to make drugs that kill viruses?

    They would also damage the body's own cells.

  7. What do painkillers do?

    They reduce the pain and other symptoms of a disease.

  8. Do painkillers kill pathogens?

    No.

  9. What is antibiotic resistance?

    When bacteria are no longer killed by an antibiotic.

  10. How does a resistant strain arise?

    A mutation makes a bacterium resistant, it survives the antibiotic, and it reproduces.

  11. Why is antibiotic resistance a concern?

    Infections become harder to treat, and people may die from infections that were once easily cured.

  12. How can resistance be reduced?

    Do not overuse antibiotics, and finish the course.

  13. What is MRSA?

    A strain of bacteria that is resistant to many antibiotics.

  14. Why shouldn't you take antibiotics for a cold?

    A cold is caused by a virus, so antibiotics do not work.

  15. What has happened to deaths from bacterial diseases since antibiotics?

    They have greatly decreased.

  16. Four numbered panels about antibiotic resistance with no labels. Describe what is happening at each step. The four steps of antibiotic resistance with their headings.

    1 A population with one resistant bacterium. 2 The antibiotic kills the non-resistant bacteria. 3 The resistant bacterium survives and divides. 4 A resistant strain: the antibiotic no longer works.