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The Open University

Understanding antibiotic resistance

The Open University via OpenLearn

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Overview

Have you ever been prescribed a course of antibiotics by your doctor to treat a bacterial infection? Did you wonder how they worked? It’s likely that, provided you completed the course prescribed by your doctor, the antibiotics successfully treated your infection. But what if the bacteria causing your infection couldn’t be treated with antibiotics? This situation is faced by an increasing number of people and in the UK at least 5000 a year die from infections that can’t be treated with currently available antibiotics. But what makes bacteria resistant to infection, what is a ‘superbug’ and what are scientists doing about the problem?This free badged course, Understanding antibiotic resistance, will introduce you to the science behind the problem of antibiotic resistance. You will learn about the history of antibiotics, what they are and how they work. You will learn how antibiotic resistance develops and spreads and look at the issues surrounding antibiotic resistance. Finally, you will look at some of the cutting edge ways that scientists are trying to tackle the problem of antibiotic resistance, from promoting good hygiene to developing new antibiotics from the soil.TranscriptAlthough this is an introductory course to antibiotic resistance, it assumes that you have a basic understanding of DNA and proteins. If you are unfamiliar with these concepts you might want to try our free OpenLearn course What do genes do? or listen to our set of audios at DNA, RNA and protein formation. This OpenLearn science course was produced with the kind support of Dangoor Education, the educational arm of The Exilarch's Foundation. Enrolling on the course will give you the opportunity to earn an Open University digital badge. Badges are not accredited by The Open University but they're a great way to demonstrate your interest in the subject and commitment to your career, and to provide evidence of continuing professional development.Once you are signed in, you can manage your digital badges online from My OpenLearn. In addition, you can download and print your OpenLearn statement of participation - which also displays your Open University badge.The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations for the course before you begin, in our optional start-of-course survey. Once you complete the course we would also value your feedback and suggestions for future improvement, in our optional end-of-course survey. Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others. This course is accredited by the CPD Standards Office. It can be used to provide evidence of continuing professional development and on successful completion of the course you will be awarded 24 CPD points. Evidence of your CPD achievement is provided on the free Statement of Participation awarded on completion.Anyone wishing to provide evidence of their enrolment on this course is able to do so by sharing their Activity Record on their OpenLearn Profile, which is available before completion of the course and earning of the Statement of Participation.

Syllabus

  • Introduction and guidance
  • Introduction and guidance
  • What is a badged course?
  • How to get a badge
  • Acknowledgements
  • Week1Week 1: A future without antibiotics?
  • Introduction
  • 1 Bacteria and infectious disease
  • 1.1 Bacterial growth
  • 1.2 Common bacterial pathogens of humans
  • 2 Antibiotics
  • 2.1 Classification
  • 2.2 How much do you know about antibiotics?
  • 3 Pre-antibiotic era
  • 4 Modern times
  • 4.1 The rise of antibiotic resistance
  • 4.2 Superbugs
  • 5 Case study: the link between antibiotic use and antibiotic resistance
  • 6 What does the future hold?
  • 7 This week’s quiz
  • 8 Summary
  • References
  • Acknowledgements
  • Week2Week 2: How do antibiotics work?
  • Introduction
  • 1 Selective toxicity
  • 1.1 Cell structure
  • 1.2 Potential bacterial targets for antibiotics
  • 2 Antibiotic modes of action
  • 2.1 Inhibitors of cell wall synthesis
  • 2.2 Inhibitors of protein synthesis
  • 2.3 Inhibitors of nucleic acid synthesis
  • 2.4 Inhibitors of metabolic reactions
  • 3 Case study: mechanism of ß-lactams
  • 4 Types of antibiotic
  • 4.1 Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria
  • 4.2 Activity against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria
  • 4.3 Bactericidal versus bacteriostatic antibiotics
  • 5 This week’s quiz
  • 6 Summary
  • References
  • Acknowledgements
  • Week3Week 3: How do bacteria become resistant to antibiotics?
  • Introduction
  • 1 Antibiotic resistance mechanisms
  • 1.1 Modifying the antibiotic target
  • 1.2 Destroying or modifying the antibiotic molecule
  • 1.3 Preventing entry, increasing exit
  • 2 Intrinsic and acquired resistance
  • 2.1 Intrinsic resistance
  • 2.2 Introducing acquired resistance
  • 3 Case study: resistance to third-generation cephalosporins
  • 3.1 Intrinsic resistance to cephalosporins
  • 3.2 Mechanisms of cephalosporin resistance
  • 3.2.1 PBP2a – a PBP that doesn’t bind cephalosporins
  • 3.2.2 Extended spectrum β-lactamases
  • 3.2.3 Porin expression and cephalosporin resistance in K. pneumoniae
  • 4 This week’s quiz
  • 5 Summary
  • References
  • Acknowledgements
  • Week4Week 4: Why are so many bacteria resistant to antibiotics?
  • Introduction
  • 1 How do mutations lead to resistance?
  • 1.1 From genetic information to protein function
  • 1.2 Genetic mutations and protein structure
  • 1.3 Transmission of mutations by vertical gene transfer
  • 2 Horizontal transfer
  • 2.1 Plasmids
  • 2.2 Conjugation
  • 2.3 Transformation
  • 2.4 Transduction
  • 3 Why are so many bacteria resistant to antibiotics?
  • 3.1 Evolution and natural selection
  • 3.2 Evolving resistance to antibiotics
  • 3.3 Experimentally evolving antibiotic resistance
  • 4 Case study: resistance to cephalosporins
  • 4.1 The origin of CTX-M-type ESBLs
  • 4.2 The rapid spread of CTX-M genes
  • 4.3 Mutations in CTX-M-type ESBLs
  • 5 This week’s quiz
  • 6 Summary
  • References
  • Acknowledgements
  • Week5Week 5: How antibiotic resistance has become such a big problem
  • Introduction
  • 1 The antibiotic resistance crisis
  • 2 How antibiotic resistance spreads
  • 3 Poor hygiene and infection control
  • 4 Overuse of antibiotics
  • 4.1 Factors leading to the overuse of antibiotics
  • 5 Misuse of antibiotics
  • 5.1 Treatment of non-bacterial infections
  • 5.2 Wrong therapeutic use
  • 6 The antibiotic discovery void
  • 7 Inadequate diagnostics and global surveillance
  • 8 Case study: Neisseria gonorrhoeae
  • 9 This week’s quiz
  • 10 Summary
  • References
  • Acknowledgements
  • Week6Week 6: Restocking the antibiotic armoury
  • Introduction
  • 1 Origins of antibiotics
  • 1.1 Natural antibiotics
  • 1.2 Synthetic and semi-synthetic antibiotics
  • 2 The manufacturing process
  • 2.1 Producing natural antibiotics
  • 2.2 Producing synthetic and semi-synthetic antibiotics
  • 3 Current status of antibiotics
  • 4 Barriers to new antibiotics – and possible solutions
  • 4.1 Discovery barriers
  • 4.2 Scientific barriers
  • 5 Making existing antibiotics more effective
  • 5.1 Resistance breakers
  • 5.2 Nano-encapsulation
  • 5.3 Chemical modification
  • 6 Case study: cephalosporin antibiotics
  • 6.1 Different generations of cephalosporins
  • 7 ‘Bioprospecting’ for new antibiotics
  • 7.1 Back to the soil
  • 7.2 Antibiotics from leafcutter ants
  • 7.3 Antibiotics from extreme environments
  • 7.4 Looking closer to home
  • 8 This week’s quiz
  • 9 Summary
  • References
  • Acknowledgements
  • Week7Week 7: Reducing antibiotic use
  • Introduction
  • 1 Why do we need to reduce antibiotic use?
  • 2 A simple way to reduce the spread of infections
  • 2.1 How infections are transmitted
  • 2.1.1 Direct person-to-person transmission
  • 2.1.2 Indirect transmission of pathogens
  • 2.2 The role of sanitation and hygiene
  • 2.3 The role of hand washing in reducing the spread of bacteria
  • 3 Case study: reducing antibiotic resistance by improving hand washing
  • 4 Rapid infection diagnostics
  • 4.1 Traditional approaches to infection diagnosis
  • 4.2 The perfect rapid diagnostic test
  • 4.3 What rapid diagnostic tests detect
  • 4.3.1 Detecting the patient infection response
  • 4.3.2 Detecting the pathogen
  • 4.3.3 The UTI dipstick test
  • 4.3.4 The Nordmann/Dortet/Poirel test
  • 4.4 The future for rapid diagnostics
  • 5 This week’s quiz
  • 6 Summary
  • References
  • Acknowledgements
  • Week8Week 8: Alternatives to antibiotics
  • Introduction
  • 1 Disrupting bacterial communication
  • 1.1 Using quorum sensing to treat infections
  • 1.2 Using quorum sensing to reduce antibiotic resistance
  • 2 Other ways to kill bacteria
  • 2.1 Phage therapy
  • 2.2 Lysin treatment
  • 3 Exploiting the natural defences of bacteria
  • 3.1 Treating infections with Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus
  • 4 A lesson from history
  • 4.1 Natural honey
  • 4.2 Metals
  • 4.2.1 Modern antibacterial applications of metals
  • 5 This week’s quiz
  • 6 Summary
  • Take the next step
  • Tell us what you think
  • References
  • Acknowledgements

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Reviews

4.0 rating, based on 1 Class Central review

4.5 rating at OpenLearn based on 16 ratings

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  • Profile image for Katie Wiest
    Katie Wiest @katiewiest
    The content covered in this class effectively explained antibiotic resistance. It was a reasonably dense class, and it described complex ideas. Even though I understood the topics, it was difficult to remember the specific names of different classes of bacteria which we were quizzed on. They explained the content clearly, but the course could be improved by reiterating previous chapters.
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