Meghan May discusses antibiotic resistance on ‘MPBN’s’ “Maine Calling”
Meghan May, Ph.D., associate professor at the University of New England’s College of Osteopathic Medicine, was a guest on an episode of MPBN’s “Maine Calling” that focused on antibiotic resistance.
The subject of so-called “superbugs” has been widely publicized, most recently when a strain of bacteria resistant to the antibiotic Colistin caused an infection in Pennsylvania. May, an expert in infectious disease, was asked how these types of bacteria evolve to become resistant to antibiotics. “This is why physicians say you should use all of your antibiotics and you shouldn’t use them when not necessary,” May said. “The reason for that ties straight into the concept of evolution. If you add antibiotics into a bacterial population you are effectively poisoning them. Those compounds do something destructive to those cells and whoever is left standing at the end of it is the one who is least effected by it. So if you leave any [bacteria] standing at the end of this, that is the population that is going to grow back and re-inhabit whatever space was abandoned.”
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