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About the Drug Resistance Zone
Remember that song you used to hate, but then heard so much everywhere you start to quite like it like it?
Bacteria can find the same thing with drugs designed to kill them. Drugs treat lots of diseases and health problems, but over time, the organisms causing the conditions can evolve and become resistant to the drugs. Resistance can spread very quickly, and is one of the most serious problems facing modern medicine.
Diseases and infections that were almost completely cured are now becoming increasingly difficult to treat.
MRSA, in purple, a very antibiotic-resistant ‘superbug’, being eaten by a white blood cell. They must have been out of ice-cream. | Image: NIH
In this zone, you will meet one scientist researching how bacteria produce drugs in order to discover new ones, one studying antibiotic resistance in tuberculosis, and another trying to find out how bacteria become resistant to antibiotics. There is also a doctor who works at a hospital treating patients with antibiotics, and a pharmacist working with patients who have infectious diseases.