Antibiotics and painkillers
Different types of medicines are available to treat many different Illness affecting plants and animals.. Some medicines only treat the symptoms and others cure the disease by killing the pathogens.
Drug types
- Painkiller
- Substance that controls the spread of bacteria in the body by killing them or stopping them reproducing.
A chemical taken to relieve pain associated with disease. are chemicals that relieve the symptoms but do not kill the pathogens. Common examples include paracetamol and aspirin, and they can relieve a headache or a sore throat.
As the symptoms are treated, your immune system still needs to combat the pathogen.
Antibiotics
Antibiotics are substances that slow down or stop the growth of Single-celled microorganisms, some of which are pathogenic in humans, animals and plants. Singular is bacterium.. They are commonly prescribed medicines, examples include An antibiotic produced by a fungus, Penicillium. Discovered by Alexander Fleming. and amoxicillin. These can be taken to cure the disease by killing the pathogen, but only cure bacterial diseases and not viral ones.
Penicillin
Penicillin was the first antibiotic discovered in 1928 by Alexander Fleming. He noticed that some bacteria he had left in a A clear glass or plastic dish, used to grow living cells from organisms so they can be studied. had been killed by the naturally occurring A type of fungus..
How do antibiotics work?
Antibiotics damage the bacterial cells but do not damage the host cells. They have the ability to cure some bacterial diseases that would have previously killed many people. Since their introduction, they have had a large influence on the world's health and death rate.
Different bacteria cause different diseases. One antibiotic may only work against one type of bacteria, or a few types. This means that a range of different antibiotics is needed for the treatment of the whole range of bacterial diseases.
Viral diseases
Viral diseases cannot be cured by antibiotics, as they reproduce inside the host cells. It is very difficult to develop Drugs that prevent viruses replicating. drugs, as they might damage the host cell whist killing the An ultramicroscopic infectious non-cellular organism that can replicate inside the cells of living hosts, with negative consequences.. Antiviral drugs only slow down viral development, and viruses change their antigens quickly which means new drugs have to be generated regularly.