Antibiotic resistance is increasing in an alarming rate. Millions of people will die by 2050 due to increased antibiotic resistance. It has become a curse to the present human civilization. It is the time we should take major steps to halt it. First we should know how to prevent antibiotic resistance.

Then we should find antibiotic alternatives to reduce the use of antibiotics. Although, preventing antibiotic resistance is a difficult task, we have to raise hands to save millions of life.

It has been great difficult to develop new antibiotics due shortage of funds or many other reasons. There is only way to prevent antibiotic resistance.

How to prevent antibiotic resistance:

There are several ways of how to prevent antibiotic resistance. Few of them are as following.

Judicious antibiotic use:

The doctors must suggest the appropriate antimicrobial drug, with the exact dose, at the right time, and for the right duration.

It is not an easy task to implement this plan. CDC takes a major step to control antibiotic resistance. They hold a day to increase awareness about antibiotic resistance. This day is called Antibiotic Awareness Day held on November 18 every year all over the word.

Surveillance and infection control:

We should maintain good hygiene to prevent microbial infection. The most we should do is to avoid the use of antimicrobial drug. If we prevent the interaction of bacteria with antibiotics, we can control antibiotic resistance. Because use of antibiotic kill some good bacteria and interact with other bacteria causing them resistant to those bacteria.

Use of specific antibiotics:

Certain antibiotics kill only specific strains of bacteria. They don’t interact with wide spectrum species of bacteria. Broad spectrum antibiotics cause many bacteria resistant to antibiotics.

Use of specific antibiotics cause less increase of antibiotic resistance than broad-spectrum antibiotics do.

Rapid diagnostic methods:

Designing better and quick diagnosis help in preventing the increase of antibiotic resistance.

Sometimes suggest their patients for broad spectrum antibiotics without waiting for diagnosis report.

As they don’t know the exact cause of infection, they suggest some extra antibiotics in their prescription. Thus the doctors make overuse of antibiotics. If the doctors get the diagnosis report quickly they can prescribe right antibiotics and prevent antibiotic resistance.

Take vaccines:

Use of vaccines prevent the microbes to infect the human and animals. If we prevent bacterial infection we can reduce the consumption of antibiotics. Thus we can halt the bacterial resistance to antibiotics. Prevention of infection is better than the use of antibiotics.

The main advantage of vaccine is, vaccine resistance is not normal as antibiotic resistance. As vaccine prevent the bacteria to infect a tissue or cell, it doesn’t get chance to mutate or evolve.

Find antibiotic alternatives:

Antibiotic alternatives replace the use of antibiotics. There are a number of antibiotic alternatives to treat or prevent bacterial infection.

For example, phage therapy is sometimes more advantageous over the antibiotics. Phage is thought to be the best antibiotic alternative against bacterial infection. Phages kill specific bacterial strains that don’t cause any harm to host cells. They don’t kill beneficial bacteria too. Bacteria can’t acquire resistance to phage.

Endolysin is a good example of antibiotic alternative. It is an enzyme that released from phage virus. It breaks down the peptidoglycan layer of bacterial cell wall. Endolysin kills many bacteria. For example Endolysin LysK and Endolysin PlyV12 kills methicillin-resistant S. aureus, and vancomycin-resistant E. faecalis, respectively.

Bacteriocins is a bacterial toxin that kill the same bacterial species of producer bacteria. Both gram positive bacteria and gram negative bacteria produces bacteriocins. Bacteriocins are of several types. These include lacticin, nisin and thuricin.