Know Your Antibiotics: Penicillin

You have a sore throat, you've been feeling hot and cold. You go to the doctor and he says you have pharyngitis. What's that? You ask. He says "it's a sore throat"."Oh, you say, and for this I payed seventy five dollars?" Ignoring your sarcasm,the doctor responds "Let's do a rapid strep test".

The rapid strep test is an antibody based test to detect the presence of Strep bacteria in the throat. The benefit of it is that it provides results within minutes. The downside is that it may be falsely negative.In this case, the test comes back positive and the doctor decides to prescribe penicillin.

Antibiotics are chemicals that can destroy bacteria. When the doctor makes a diagnois he or she tries to determine what are the bacteria most likely to be involved. In this case, confirmation of the presence of strep leads the doctor to prescribe penicillin, the drug of choice for strep.

The discovery and development of penicillin is a fascinating story in itself. Although Fleming discovered penicillin, it was a group of dedicated researchers propelled by the Second World War who developed penicillin into the life saver it is today. See The Cantaloupe From Peoria That Saved The World The doctor could precribe amoxicillin,perhaps the most commonly used of all antibiotics. Many people don't realize that amoxicillin is a form of penicillin. Over time a plethora of penicillin forms and derivatives have been produced. Amoxicillin, ampicillin, bicillin, dicloxacillin are all penicillins.

As you have heard, bacteria can develop resistance to antibiotics. In the case of penicillin they have developed the ability to produce penicillinase, a chemical that can destroy penicillin. Scientists have responded with drugs like Augmentin, a combination of amoxicillin and clavulinate. The clavulinate acts to disable the penicillinase.

But some bacteria have even developed ways to defeat the Augmentin.