why should you always finish a course of antibiotics even if the infection has cleared up
In: Biology
* Antibiotics kill bacteria
* The first bacteria to be killed are the weakest
* Once your symptoms have cleared up, there might still be some residual bacteria left
* Because the weakest bacteria were killed first, the remaining bacteria are the stronger ones
* By stopping your antibiotics early, you are allowing the stronger bacteria to breed and re-establish an infection
* Now you are infected with a stronger bacteria than before and you may need even stronger antibiotics to deal with it – stopping the course early again will create an even worse problem with even stronger bacteria
* This is essentially how antibiotic-resistant superbugs developed
You’ve pushed the infection to the brink of extinction. Do you want to assume it’s dead and allow it to come back with a vengeance like a movie villain? What comes back will be stronger because you killed off the weak parts. No, kill it for sure by finishing the prescription.
A bunch of reasons!
Even if you don’t feel sick anymore, there are usually still some bacteria that take a little longer to kill. If you take your whole course of antibiotics, you will eventually take care of them, but if you stop too early, they could have a chance to start dividing again and you could get sick all over again.
Another reason is, if that happens, the bacteria left over from the incomplete round of antibiotics will be likely to be the ones who were a little better at withstanding the antibiotics you were taking – because they survived longer than the bacteria that died, their “offspring” will survive longer too, and maybe even develop resistance to that antibiotic. So now you can’t even use that antibiotic to treat your infection anymore, because it won’t work!
Finally, not all antibiotics work the same way. A lot of them will kill bacteria outright, but others are “bacteriostatic” – basically they hold the bacteria down so that our bodies can take care of them. But our bodies need time to develop a strong response to an infection, and if they are using a helper like these antibiotics, they may not be able to fight as well if that help is taken away too soon.
The symptoms may have cleared up, but there still may be bacteria in your body. These bacteria have been exposed to the antibiotic, which means they could continue to replicate and evolve resistance to those antibiotics. This is how we get antibiotic resistant bacteria.
These resistant bacteria can then spread to other people. This is a bad thing.
Because it may not be 100% cleared up even though you feel better. And if you get sick again you’ll now have to worry about the bacteria being resistant to the antibiotics.
Showing no outward symptoms doesn’t mean the condition is completely gone. You may look and feel fine, but that doesn’t mean all the “bad” bacteria is gone yet. If it’s *not* gone and you stop taking the antibiotics, you run the risk of having the infection return. Not only that, but you may end up needing a stronger medication because the remaining bacteria may now be resistant to the first course.
Several people are in an empty pool and none of them know how to swim. You fill the pool up and they all start to drown. Some flail wildly, some sink to the bottom, some do other things. After awhile, most of the people have drowned in the pool, but some are still flailing about managing somehow to stay above water. You drain the pool and the ones that kept their head above water not only didn’t die, but they also now have the knowledge on what to do to avoid drowning in the pool if it happened again. If you had kept the pool filled longer, eventually they would have tired and drowned as well.
Antibiotic courses are principled on that time table.
ALWAYS FINISH YOUR ANTIBIOTIC PRESCRIPTION!!!!
This is never stressed enough. Antibiotics kill bacteria, but if you stop once you feel better as most people do, that doesn’t mean all bacteria are dead, just that there is a small enough population so that you are not symptomatic .
If you stop, in this small surviving population, via natural selection, will arise a higher percentage of bacteria that are resistant to the antibiotic.
Not finishing causes resistance. Resistance is a horrible problem that is exponentially increasing. It is estimated that deaths related to resistance will be higher in prevalence than cancer by 2050.
So PLEASE finish any prescriptions you get.
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