• Question: why do you have to take a full course of antibiotics for them to work?

    Asked by Sophie to Aaron, David, Elaine, Sarah, Zoe on 10 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: David Foley

      David Foley answered on 10 Nov 2014:

      You need to complete your course of antibiotics to prevent resistance. You may have read in the news about antibiotic resistant bacteria or “superbugs” in hospitals.

      If you only partially finish your course of antibiotics, you will not completely kill all the bad bacteria. A few of the survivors will have adapted so that they can destroy or remove the antibiotic the next time they are exposed to it. These bacteria now have an advantage over their neighboring bacteria the next time they are exposed to an antibiotic – they therefore outgrow them and continue to make you ill.

      Once this “resistance” has emerged in a strain of bacteria, it cannot be undone – only new antibiotics that work in different ways can be used to treat the infection – and we are fast running out of new antibiotics.

    • Photo: Zoe Roberts

      Zoe Roberts answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      Good question! After a few days of taking antibiotics you start to feel a bit better. This is because you have started to kill off some of the infection. However, some of these bacteria will still remain. It is important to continue taking the antibiotics so that you kill all the bacteria causing the infection so that they don’t change (mutate) and become resistant to the antibiotics.

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