Reply #27: remember that these microbes are evoloving [View All]

[SnowGoose]

in other individuals, before they get to you. So your chances of catching a resistant strain are probalby not significantly influenced by you taking lots of antibiotics.

HOWEVER.

More and more research is emerging that antibiotics have undesirable effects on allergies. It works like this: the normal, healthy bacteria that exist in a mutualistic relationship with you (in your gut, as well as other places like the female mammary ducts) can be killed by the antibiotics, just like the bad bugs. But they actually do important jobs, some of which are related to regulation of T-cells, so killing them off (without replacing them) can disrupt normal tolerance, causing your immune system to react inappropriately to various stimuli, resulting in allergies and asthma.

This is becoming a hot area in immunology lately.

So even aside from the emergence of drug-resistant pathogens, overuse of antibiotics is bad for you.

'Goose