Teacher and Technician Information

Specification Points – 4.3.1.8 Antibiotics and painkillers

Students should be able to explain the use of antibiotics and other medicines in treating
disease.
Antibiotics, such as penicillin, are medicines that help to cure bacterial disease by killing
infective bacteria inside the body. It is important that specific bacteria should be
treated by specific antibiotics.

The use of antibiotics has greatly reduced deaths from infectious bacterial diseases. However, the emergence of
strains resistant to antibiotics is of great concern.

Antibiotics cannot kill viral pathogens.

Painkillers and other medicines are used to treat the symptoms of disease but do not kill pathogens.
It is difficult to develop drugs that kill viruses without also damaging the body’s tissues.
 What Can Medicines Do?

What are
antibiotics for?
What Can Medicines Do? 03/04/23

Give the function of an antibiotic and a

painkiller

Describe what antibiotics cannot do

Explain the use of antibiotics and other

medicines in treating disease.
Antibiotics

What are
antibiotics for?
Discuss
Being Ill

Brainstorm some common symptoms of being ill…

Painkillers

We don’t kill
any microbes,
Paracetomol: we just make
Pain reliever
Fever (temperature) reducer you feel
Relieves aches and pains better!!!

Ibuprofen:
Pain reliever
Anti-inflammatory
Fever (temperature) reducer
Antibiotics

Antibiotics are medicines that kill infective bacteria inside our

body.

Since their discovery in 1928, by Alexander Fleming, they have

reduced deaths from bacterial infections.

Fleming discovered the antibiotic we now call Penicillin as

mould.
Antibiotics

Antibiotics kill bacterial cells inside your body

(which disinfectants and antiseptics can’t do
– they are toxic).

Antibiotics damage bacterial cells without

damaging human cells.

Antibiotics can’t kill viruses because viral Colds and flu

pathogens reproduce inside our cells. It’s are caused by
extremely difficult to develop drugs that can VIRUSES!!!
kill the viruses without damaging cells of the
human at the same time.
Specific Antibiotics

Penicillin and amoxicillin are both broad range antibiotics – they aim to
kill all bacteria.
Specific bacteria should be treated with specific antibiotics.

e.g.
Augmentin is used to treat
infections in the ENT area:
sinusitis, pneumonia, ear
infections, bronchitis

You don’t need to learn this example

Plenary

Explain the use of antibiotics and other medicines in

treating disease.

This means describe what they’re used

for/what they’re not used for.
And give reasons why.

This question is basically TWO questions…

Explain the use of antibiotics in treating disease
Explain the use of other medicines in treating disease
Homework
The Story…
Alexander Fleming was born in Ayrshire on 6 August 1881, the son of a farmer. He moved to London at the age of 13
and later trained as a doctor. He qualified with distinction in 1906 and began research at St Mary's Hospital Medical
School at the University of London under Sir Almroth Wright, a pioneer in vaccine therapy. In World War One
Fleming served in the Army Medical Corps and was mentioned in dispatches. After the war, he returned to St Mary's.
In 1928, while studying influenza, Fleming noticed that mould had developed accidentally on a set of culture dishes
being used to grow the staphylococci germ. The mould had created a bacteria-free circle around itself. Fleming
experimented further and named the active substance penicillin. It was two other scientists however, Australian
Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, a refugee from Nazi Germany, who developed penicillin further so that it could be
produced as a drug. At first supplies of penicillin were very limited, but by the 1940s it was being mass-produced by
the American drugs industry.
Fleming wrote numerous papers on bacteriology, immunology and chemotherapy. He was elected professor of the
medical school in 1928 and emeritus professor of bacteriology at the University of London in 1948. He was elected
fellow of the Royal Society in 1943 and knighted in 1944. In 1945 Fleming, Florey and Chain shared the Nobel Prize
in Medicine. Fleming died on 11 March 1955.
Alexander Fleming – Scottish
bacteriologist and Nobel Prize
winner, best known for his discovery
of penicillin.

Tasks:
1. Produce a timeline (in your exercise
book) of the life of Alexander
Fleming, including all dated
information from the story.
2. Draw a diagram of what you think he
saw on the agar plate in 1928. Add
descriptive labels to enhance this
diagram.