Vol. 2, Issue 3 (2013)

Author(s):
Shamnas M, Arya P S, Dr. M G Deepak

Abstract:
The antibiotics field was initiated when Paul EHRLICH first coined the term ‘magic bullet’, or chemotherapy, to designate the use of antimicrobial compounds to treat microbial infections. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention in USA has estimated that some 50 millions of the 150 million prescriptions every year are unnecessary. This is true, but the real wonder is the rise of antibiotic resistance in hospitals, communities, and the environment concomitant with their use. The extraordinary genetic capacities of microbes have benefitted from man's overuse of antibiotics to exploit every source of resistance genes and every means of horizontal gene transmission to develop multiple mechanisms of resistance.