Hey everybody, Dr. O here. I want to run through just some antibiotic terminology here. So these are all terms that will be covered in other videos I’m sure, but I just want you to have all the terms figured out before we dive too deep. So, let’s start with right up here on the screen we have antibiotics vs. antimicrobials. So, an Antibiotic is a compound that’s produced by a microbe, a bacteria or a fungus, to inhibit the growth or kill other microbes. So, that’s the key there so to technically to be an antibiotic you have to be produced by a living organism to inhibit or kill another organism. Antimicrobials is a much broader category. So, not only can antimicrobials ah so they they can be like “synthetic antibiotics” right? Your like your sulfa drugs that aren’t that aren’t produced by organism, but still kill bacteria, but they can also kill anything that would kill like a, a fungus or a parasite or a virus (even though viruses aren’t technically alive) um would be called an antimicrobial. So, an antibiotic is a type of antimicrobial. Now, I don’t care if you really care if you kind of use the terms slightly incorrectly, but that’s what they are. So, antibiotics made by a living organism to inhibit the growth or kill other microorganisms. Antimicrobials much broader, really any compound that inhibits the growth of any living thing would be a so even like a hand sanitizer would be considered an antimicrobial, that type of stuff. So, that’s antibiotics vs. antimicrobials. Ah next we have the term selective toxicity. This is brought up a ton in microbiology classes. The reason we care so much about the structure and function of bacteria is we’re looking for things that they do different than us. We’re looking for things they have different than us, because selective toxicity is can you kill a microbe for in for like can you kill a bacteria without hurting its environment which would be us. So, a perfect drug would be selectively toxic it would only damage bacteria fungi whatever you’re looking for um without hurting us. So, that’s why you’d look at like most of antibiotics. They attack the fact that bacteria have cell walls because we don’t have cell walls or they attack the bacterial ribosome because our ribosomes are different in most situations. So, that’s what selective toxicity means. Alright next, we have Broad Spectrum vs. Narrow Spectrum vs. Extended Spectrum. So, in the future I hope these terms mean something completely different because because I hope that in the future we find a lot more truly Narrow Spectrum treatment treatments, which means that um that they will only kill a certain type of bacteria or a very small group of bacteria, but we’re not there yet. Um, right now, Broad Spectrum antibiotics can basically kill most organism, gram positive, let’s just say gram positive plus gram negative. Narrow Spectrum antibiotics can kill one or the other, gram positive or gram negative. And they can’t kill all of the, but that’s a good way to look at it. So, if you can kill both gram positive and gram negative, you are Broad Spectrum. If you kill only one or the other, you’d be Narrow Spectrum. Just understanding that there are plenty of organisms in those groups that these antibiotics wouldn’t work against. Extended Spectrum are going to be like your semi-synthetic penicillin’s where you’ve taken a natural penicillin that is broad spectrum and can only kill gram positives and you’ve extended it out so it can now kill many more microbes like the gram negatives. So, that’s Broad vs. Narrow vs. Extended Spectrum. We’ll do a separate video about the ramifications of using them because, obviously if you kill if Broad Spectrum antibiotics kill a lot more of the bad guys, they also kill a lot more of the good guys. So, we’ll come back to that. Actually, ties into one of these two terms here. So, we have Superbugs vs. Superinfections so though some people confuse these. A Superbug is a multi-drug resistant organism. So, like for example, MRSA it’s Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, but it doesn’t just resist Methicillin. It resists a whole bunch of different antibiotics. That’s why it’s called a Superbug. So, Superbug think multi-drug resistant organism. You become a Superbug when you can two or more of our antibiotic treatments. Superinfections are completely different. So, a Superinfection is when you’re using antibiotics, ah usually very Broad Spectrum antibiotics that ah kill the bad guys, but also kill a lot of the good guys. A Superinfection is an infection that will pop up in that situation. So, the two most common examples are Candida or yeast infections. So, if you just obliterate your microbiome and kill a whole bunch of bacteria, the yeast are going to take over. And the other one that is real common is C. diff. So, those of you who work in healthcare settings know that C. diff or Clostridium difficile is a very serious problem and it kills 23,000 Americans a year, somewhere in that ballpark. And the reason it is so powerful, it is a bacteria, but it’s a spore forming bacteria. So, you obliterate all of its competition, it’s been hiding in someone’s gut and now and now it’s able to bloom and take over because you changed the environment with antibiotics. So, a Superinfection is a secondary infection that shows up, not because of the first infection, but because of the treatment with antibiotics. Um, what else about them? So, you think so think about, ah C. diff it’s just like um, if somebody has a C. diff infection, right? They’ve actually, they may have gotten it, they may have actually been infected or colonized by those microbes 10, 20, 60 years earlier. It just now pops up because of antibiotics. Now, uh that’s why almost everyone that has a C. diff infection has recently taken antibiotics. The only other examples I’ve seen is people that are severely immunocompromised or maybe they’re undergoing chemotherapy. Alright, so that is a Superbug vs. a Superinfection. Last two terms here, we have Bactericidal vs. Bacteriostatic. So, “cide” think like homicide, right? Um, Bactericidal means it’s a compound that can kill bacteria. Bacteriostatic, um compounds, don’t kill bacteria. They slow or inhibit their growth. So, like think about the refrigerator. The refrigerator is Bacteriostatic or some of your antibiotics like your sulfa drugs are Bacteriostatic. So, alright that’s that’s a list of antimicrobial or antibiotic terminology that I feel like you should know before you dive too deep into this concept. Alright, have a wonderful day. Be blessed!