Disease Transmission and Prevention

5. Bacterial Diseases Prevention

Prokaryotes are everywhere: They readily colonize the surface of any type of material, and food is not an exception. Usually, prokaryotes colonize food and food-processing equipment in the form of a biofilm. Outbreaks of bacterial infection related to food consumption are common. A foodborne disease (colloquially called “food poisoning”) is an illness resulting from the consumption the pathogenic bacteria, viruses, or other parasites that contaminate food. Although the United States has one of the safest food supplies in the world, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported that “76 million people get sick, more than 300,000 are hospitalized, and 5,000 Americans die each year from foodborne illness.”

All types of food can potentially be contaminated with bacteria. The characteristics of foodborne illnesses have changed over time. In the past, it was relatively common to hear about sporadic cases of botulism, the potentially fatal disease produced by a toxin from the anaerobic bacterium Clostridium botulinum.

The word antibiotic comes from the Greek anti meaning “against” and bios meaning “life.” An antibiotic is a chemical, produced either by microbes or synthetically, that is hostile to the growth of other organisms. Today’s news and media often address concerns about an antibiotic crisis. Are the antibiotics that easily treated bacterial infections in the past becoming obsolete? Are there new “superbugs”—bacteria that have evolved to become more resistant to our arsenal of antibiotics? Is this the beginning of the end of antibiotics? All these questions challenge the healthcare community.

One of the main causes of resistant bacteria is the abuse of antibiotics. The imprudent and excessive use of antibiotics has resulted in the natural selection of resistant forms of bacteria. The antibiotic kills most of the infecting bacteria, and therefore only the resistant forms remain. These resistant forms reproduce, resulting in an increase in the proportion of resistant forms over non-resistant ones. Another major misuse of antibiotics is in patients with colds or the flu, for which antibiotics are useless. Another problem is the excessive use of antibiotics in livestock. The routine use of antibiotics in animal feed promotes bacterial resistance as well.

The imprudent use of antibiotics has paved the way for bacteria to expand populations of resistant forms. For example, Staphylococcus aureus, often called “staph,” is a common bacterium that can live in the human body and is usually easily treated with antibiotics. A very dangerous strain, however, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has made the news over the past few years. This strain is resistant to many commonly used antibiotics, including methicillin, amoxicillin, penicillin, and oxacillin. MRSA can cause infections of the skin, but it can also infect the bloodstream, lungs, urinary tract, or sites of injury. While MRSA infections are common among people in healthcare facilities, they have also appeared in healthy people who haven’t been hospitalized but who live or work in tight populations.
Attribution: "Bacterial Diseases in Humans" by OpenStaxCollege is licensed under CC BY 4.0