Good morning all! Today’s Saturday Lecture Series takes us back into the realm of medicine again. Wash your hands and disinfect your lab tables, gather your microscopes and Gram Stain kits…lets get infected!
This time we will look at bacteria and drug resistance, specifically Acinetobacter baumanni. A baumanii will be used in two ways, first the mechanics of how bacteria mutate and take on additional drug resistant genes form other bacteria and second, how the bacteria itself manages to live and travel through the health care system. I picked Acinetobacter baumanii as the case study because the prevalence of this bacteria is on the rise, and has mutated to become multi-antibiotic resistant in some cases. Acinetobacter baumanii is our stand-in for other MDR (multi-drug resistant) bacterias, it is used an an example.
All bacteria are resistant to some antibiotics at the genetic level. The interesting thing about A. baumanii is that it collects these immunities from all other bacterias and makes them a permanent part of the genetic structure rendering A. baumanii resistant to all to almost all antibiotics
.
How Bacteria Gain Resistance:
Most antibiotics prevent protein synthesis in the bacterial cell wall causing death of the bacteria. Often, a beta-lactam ring is in the nucleus of the antibiotic. Some multi drug resistant bacterias have an enzyme (beta lactamase) that destroys this beta lactam ring rendering the antibiotic useless. Acinetobacter baumannii, a bacteria resistant to most antibiotics.
.
Acinetobacter baumanii videos:
and more videos:
.
Relevant Documents:
This from Johns Hopkins Epidemiology/Infection Control
.
