Problems Posed by Antibiotic-Resistant Tuberculosis Bacteria

Tuberculosis (TB) has been successfully fought with antibiotics for decades, but the emergence of antibiotic-resistance TB bacteria has resulted in numerous complications in the battle against this disease.

Misuse of antibiotics via their frequent introduction into an individual's body may destroy certain weaker strains of the TB bacteria, but will leave in place the few bacteria that have by chance been born with the ability to resist the antibiotics used. These bacteria will then have no obstacle toward proliferating and thus contributing to the evolution of a strain almost fully resistant to that particular antibiotic. The resistant bacteria are naturally selected to survive and multiply as the fittest under such conditions.

When an environment rich in bacteria for a particular disease exists, it may be possible for several afflicted persons to be treated with a different antibiotic each and for those persons to develop strains of bacteria immune to that particular antibiotic. Due to frequent contact between these individuals, the various specifically immune strains can transfer from one individual to another. Within a given individual's body a strain immune to antibiotic A is free to undergo genetic recombination with a strain immune to antibiotic B, thus sometimes transferring immunity to two or more antibiotics to a given set of bacterial organisms, whose multiplication can bring about a populous multi-resistant strain.