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B6: PREVENTING AND TREATING DISEASE (Antibiotics and Painkillers…
B6: PREVENTING AND TREATING DISEASE
Vaccination
Ifa a pathogen enters the body the immune system tries to destroy the pathogen
Vaccination involves introducing small amounts of dead or inactive forms of a pathogen into your body to stimulate the white blood cells to produce antibodies. If the same live pathogen re-enters the body, the white blood cells respond quickly to produce the correct antibodies preventing infection
If a large section of the population is immune to a pathogen, the spread of the pathogen is much reduced (herd immunity)
Antibiotics and Painkillers
Painkillers and other medicines treat the symptoms of disease but do not kill the pathogens that cause it
Antibiotics cure bacterial diseases by killing the bacterial pathogens inside your body
The use of antibiotics has greatly reduced deaths from infectious diseases
The emergence of strains of bacterial which are resistant to antibiotics is a matter of great concern
Antibiotics do not destroy viruses because viruses reproduce inside the cells. It is difficult to develop drugs that can destroy viruses without damaging your body cells
Discovering Drugs
Traditionally drugs were extracted from plants (eg. digitalis) or from microorganisms (eg. penicillin)
Penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming from the
Penicillium
mould
Most new drugs are synthesised by chemists in the pharmaceutical industry. However, the starting point may still be a chemical extracted from a plant
Developing Drugs
New medicinal drugs are extensively tested for toxicity, efficacy and dosage
New drugs are tested in the laboratory using cells, tissues and live animals
Preclinical testing of new drugs takes place in a laboratory on cells, tissues and live animals. Clinical trials use healthy volunteers for patients. Low doses are used to test for safety, followed by higher doses to test for optimum dose
In double blind trials, some patients are given a placebo
Monoclonal Antibodies
Monoclonal antibodies are produced from single clone of cells. Each type is specific to one binding site on a specific protein antigen so they can target specific chemicals
Monoclonal antibodies are produced by stimulating mouse lymphocytes to make a specific antibody. Large amounts of the specific monoclonal antibody can be collected and purified
Uses of Monoclonal Antibodies
for diagnosis in pregnancy tests
to identify or locate specific molecules in cells or tissue
in labs to measure levels of hormones and other chemicals in the blood to detect pathogens for research
to treat diseases
They have been developed against the antigens of cancer cells
If a monoclonal antibody is bound to a radioactive substance, a toxic drug or a chemical that stops cells growing or dividing, it will deliver the substance to the cancer cells without harming other cells in the body
Monoclonal antibodies have created more side effects than expected and are not yet as widely used and hoped when they were first developed