• Question: Are antibiotics bad for you? Why do you have to finish the bottle?

    Asked by 473drud32 to Anne, Florence, Mark, Neil, Sinead on 6 Nov 2015. This question was also asked by 655drud32, 447drud32, CK16, emily69, einstein29, katiex, 653drud32, 524drud32.
    • Photo: Sinead Balgobin

      Sinead Balgobin answered on 6 Nov 2015:

      While there are some side effects (like being sick, or feeling bloated) and some people can be allergic to them (like penicillin), antibiotics, when taken for a bacterial infection, are definitely good for you.

      What you shouldn’t do is take them if your illness isn’t caused by bacteria, or stop taking them before you finish the bottle. This is because bacteria can build up a resistance to the antibiotics. This means that the antibiotics will no longer work, because the bacteria are no longer affected by them.

      Antibiotics are one of the most important medical discoveries in our history, because they mean we can survive lots of diseases that 100 years ago, would have been deadly. If bacteria become resistant to the antibiotics we make, once again we won’t be able to stop those diseases, and we’ll go back to a time when a simple infection can lead to death.

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