Antibiotics and painkillers

Antibiotics, such as penicillin, are medicines that help cure bacterial disease by killing infective bacteria inside the body.

Different bacteria are killed by different antibiotics, so it is important that the specific bacteria causing an infection are treated with the right antibiotic.

The use of antibiotics has greatly reduced deaths from infectious bacterial diseases.

Antibiotics do not kill viruses, so they are useless against viral diseases such as colds, flu and measles.

Viruses live and reproduce inside the body's own cells. This makes it very difficult to develop drugs that kill viruses without also damaging the body's tissues.

Painkillers, such as paracetamol and aspirin, and other medicines are used to treat the symptoms of a disease — for example, to reduce pain or fever.

They do not kill pathogens, so they don't cure the disease. The immune system still has to destroy the pathogen.

Bacteria can mutate. Sometimes a mutation makes a bacterium resistant to an antibiotic. When the antibiotic is used, non-resistant bacteria are killed, but resistant ones survive and reproduce, so the resistant strain spreads. MRSA is a resistant strain that is very hard to treat.

To slow the development of resistant strains:

• Doctors should not prescribe antibiotics for non-serious or viral infections.
• Patients should complete the full course, so all bacteria are killed.
• The use of antibiotics in farming should be restricted.