70 Fun Facts About Antibiotics

Antibiotics work against bacteria but are useless against which of these?

Prescribing them for colds and other viral infections is one of the commonest forms of misuse.

What does the word 'antibiotic' literally mean, from its Greek roots?

In strict usage the term covers substances one microbe makes to fight another; fully synthetic drugs like sulfonamides are technically 'antibacterials'.

Who discovered penicillin after noticing mould on a culture plate at a London hospital?

He could not persuade anyone it mattered, largely because the substance was so hard to isolate.

At which London hospital was penicillin discovered?

The laboratory is now a museum, and an International Historic Chemical Landmark plaque was placed there in 1999.

Which bacterium was growing on the famous contaminated culture plate that led to penicillin?

The chance observation was made on 3 September and confirmed with a new experiment on 28 September.

Penicillin is produced by moulds of which genus?

The species on the original plate was eventually identified as P. rubens; most commercial penicillin comes from P. chrysogenum.

In which year was penicillin discovered?

The discoverer published his experiment the following year and named the substance penicillin.

Ehrlich and Hata's 1910 syphilis drug Salvarsan was known by what number in their series of experiments?

It was the first synthetic antibacterial and was marketed by Hoechst from late 1910.

Salvarsan, the first synthetic antibacterial drug, was a compound of which element?

Ehrlich had started from dyes, noticing that some stained bacterial cells but not human ones.

Gerhard Domagk developed Prontosil, the first sulfonamide, at the laboratories of which German company?

It worked against Gram-positive cocci but not enterobacteria, and won him a Nobel Prize.

Why could sulfanilamide, the active ingredient of Prontosil, not be patented?

That helped the sulfa drugs spread fast and opened the era of antibacterials.

Which American microbiologist first used the term 'antibiotic' in journal articles in 1942?

His definition covered substances made by one microbe that stop others growing, which excluded synthetic sulfonamides.

The 1945 Nobel Prize for penicillin was shared by its discoverer and which two Oxford scientists?

Their team purified penicillin G in 1942, though it stayed scarce outside the Allied military until 1945.

Which Oxford crystallographer confirmed the structure of penicillin by X-ray in 1945?

She won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this and other structure determinations.

Albert Alexander, first patient of Oxford's penicillin in 1941, improved and then died. Why?

The Oxford team simply could not make enough; several later patients were treated successfully.

The high-yield wartime penicillin mould was found on a mouldy what in a Peoria market?

It produced six times as much penicillin as the original London mould.

Which by-product did the Peoria laboratory use as a fermentation medium to boost penicillin yields?

The lab was a federal one and already had large fermentation facilities.

How many doses of penicillin had the United States produced in time for the Normandy invasion in 1944?

By June 1945 production had reached over 646 billion units a year.

Which country was the first to make penicillin available for civilian use after the Second World War?

The US public got access on 15 March 1945.

Why did Howard Florey never patent penicillin?

Sir Henry Dale gave the advice; the American Andrew Jackson Moyer patented the mass-production methods in 1945 instead.

Because early penicillin was so scarce, doctors routinely recovered and reused it from what?

About 80 percent of a dose is cleared from the body within three to four hours.

Which gout drug was given with penicillin to slow its excretion and prolong its effect?

It competes for the same transporter in the kidney, and is still used when very high penicillin levels are needed.

Penicillin kills bacteria by blocking the final step in building which structure?

With fewer cross-links in its peptidoglycan, the cell cannot hold its osmotic gradient, water floods in and it bursts.

Which structural feature of penicillin binds to bacterial enzymes and gives its drug family its name?

Cephalosporins and carbapenems keep the same ring at the centre of their structures.

Bacteria resist penicillin by producing which enzymes that break open its ring?

Drugs like clavulanic acid bind these enzymes irreversibly so the antibiotic can work.

Why is clavulanic acid added to some penicillin-type antibiotics?

The combination is among the most consumed antibiotics in the world.

Which broad-spectrum semisynthetic penicillin of 1961 was the first major development from its nucleus?

It became possible once 6-APA, the core of the penicillin molecule, could be isolated.

The 'M' in the superbug MRSA stands for resistance to which antibiotic?

That drug was designed to beat β-lactamase-producing bacteria, and then the resistant staph strains emerged anyway.

The penicillin 'nucleus' 6-APA was discovered in 1957 at which company's laboratories?

Attaching different side groups to it produced penicillins with better spectrum, stability and oral absorption.

Which MIT chemist completed the first chemical synthesis of penicillin in 1957?

His route was no good for mass production but yielded new peptide-synthesis methods and protecting groups.

Roughly what proportion of the US population claims to be allergic to penicillin?

Most of them can eventually tolerate it, since positive skin tests fade by about 10 percent for each year of avoidance.

Which of the two clinical penicillins can be taken by mouth because it withstands stomach acid?

The injected form is destroyed by stomach acid but can be given in much higher doses.

Skeletons from ancient Nubia (350–550 CE) contain high levels of which antibiotic, probably from fermented beer?

Researchers think the intake was routine and deliberate: 'they had to know what they were doing'.

In 1877 Pasteur and Koch saw an airborne microbe inhibit which bacterium, the first description of antibiosis?

The French bacteriologist Jean Paul Vuillemin coined 'antibiosis' for the phenomenon.

Ernest Duchesne, whose 1897 thesis first proposed treating infections with moulds, died of which disease?

Army service stopped his research; the disease that killed him is now treated with antibiotics.

From which soil bacterium did René Dubos isolate tyrothricin, the first natural antibiotic, in 1939?

It was 20 percent gramicidin and 80 percent tyrocidine, and treated wounds well but was too toxic to use systemically.

In the WHO's 2018 report on 2015 data, which country had the highest antibiotic consumption per head?

Burundi had the lowest, at 4.4 defined daily doses per 1,000 people per day against Mongolia's 64.4.

According to the WHO's global surveillance, which antibiotic is the most frequently consumed worldwide?

It is often paired with clavulanic acid to beat resistant strains, and that combination ranks just behind it.

How many deaths worldwide were directly attributable to antimicrobial resistance in 2019?

Nearly five million deaths a year are associated with resistance more broadly.

In which year did the European Union ban the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in farm animals?

The UK had restricted farm use back in 1970 after the Swann report.

What was the slogan of the French government campaign, launched in 2002, that cut needless prescriptions?

The reduction was especially marked in children.

A colistin-resistant US 'superbug' was identified in May 2016 in which species?

NDM-1, another resistance enzyme, already defeats most standard intravenous antibiotics.

Which class of antibiotics is linked to tendon damage when given with a systemic corticosteroid?

Fluoroquinolone side effects have been linked to damage to mitochondria.

Which antibiotic causes a disulfiram-like reaction with alcohol?

It blocks the enzyme that breaks down acetaldehyde; moderate drinking does not interfere with most common antibiotics.

Antibiotic-associated diarrhoea is often caused by the overgrowth of which gut bacterium?

Faecal microbiota transplants cure about 90 percent of resistant cases.

Which antibiotic has the most synergistic combinations and is nearly always a partner drug?

Combinations of a bacteriostatic and a bactericidal antibiotic, by contrast, are generally antagonistic.

Some antibiotics also damage which bacteria-derived organelle in human cells?

The resulting oxidative stress has been suggested as a mechanism for fluoroquinolone side effects.

How many new classes of antibiotics were introduced in the 35 years after 1968?

Twelve classes had been launched between 1935 and 1968; four more arrived in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

Unlike antibiotics, phage therapy is so bacteria-specific that it avoids disturbing what?

Phages inject their DNA, multiply and burst the bacterial cell, then go on to infect more of the same strain.

Survivors of which December 1942 Boston disaster were the first burn patients treated with penicillin?

That same year the first US-made penicillin, from Merck, treated its first patient.

What share of all existing American-made penicillin did first US patient Anne Miller receive in March 1942?

By June that year there was enough for just ten patients.

The Peoria lab where Florey and Heatley took their mould samples in 1941 belonged to which US department?

They had failed to persuade the British government to fund large-scale production.

In 1874 William Roberts noticed cultures of P. glaucum, the mould used to make what, stayed free of bacteria?

It was one of several 19th-century observations of moulds fighting microbes that nobody followed up.

In which year did Gerhard Domagk receive the Nobel Prize for the sulfonamide drug Prontosil?

Ehrlich had won his in 1908, for immunology rather than for Salvarsan.

What is treatment with a broad-spectrum antibiotic, given before the pathogen is identified, called?

Once lab results identify the bug, a narrow-spectrum drug is preferred to limit cost, toxicity and resistance.

Roughly what share of antibiotics in use derive from actinomycetes, a group of soil bacteria?

That is why soil bacteria are still screened first in the hunt for new drugs.

Roughly what failure rate of contraceptive pills has been attributed to antibiotics in clinical studies?

Rifampicin is the notable exception, likely because it boosts liver enzymes that break down the pill's active ingredients.

Which broad-spectrum antibiotic is the classic suspect for reducing birth-control pill effectiveness?

The mechanism is thought to be increased hepatic enzyme activity rather than any effect on gut flora.

Which of these antibiotic classes is bactericidal despite being a protein-synthesis inhibitor?

Most protein-synthesis inhibitors merely halt growth; drugs that attack the cell wall, membrane or key enzymes tend to kill outright.

Daptomycin belongs to which of the four new antibiotic classes introduced in the late 2000s and early 2010s?

The others were tigecycline, linezolid and fidaxomicin, ending a 40-year drought in new classes.

Which antibiotic family is still isolated directly from living organisms rather than made semisynthetically?

Quinolones, sulfonamides and oxazolidinones are made purely by chemical synthesis; most others are semisynthetic tweaks of natural molecules.

How many new antibiotic classes were launched between 1935 and 1968?

Only two more arrived between 1969 and 2003, which is why the late-2000s wave of four new classes mattered so much.

Roughly how many deaths a year are associated with antimicrobial resistance globally?

Nearly half a million new cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis are also estimated each year.

Which two scientists showed in 1943 that antibiotics select for strains already carrying resistance genes?

Resistance can also spread by horizontal gene transfer, and it may carry a fitness cost that later mutations compensate for.

NDM-1 is an enzyme that gives bacteria resistance to which broad group of antibiotics?

The UK Health Protection Agency said most NDM-1 isolates resist all standard intravenous antibiotics for severe infections.

Resistance rates to penicillin above 90% have been reported in which anaerobic genus?

Anaerobes were historically considered less worrying for resistance, which makes the figures notable.

Roughly what cure rate do fecal microbiota transplants achieve against resistant C. difficile infection?

The FDA has not formally approved the procedure but permits it in some cases; stool banks and oral delivery are in development.

Bezlotoxumab, an FDA-approved monoclonal antibody, treats recurrent infection by which bacterium?

Antibody therapy dates back to anti-tetanus immunoglobulin in the 1910s and works by neutralising bacterial toxins.

Antisense RNA targeting which gene has restored methicillin-resistant staph's susceptibility to oxacillin?

mecA encodes the modified penicillin-binding protein 2a that makes S. aureus methicillin-resistant.

Which antibiotic-alternation strategy have studies found ineffective against resistance?

Better sanitation, vaccines and stewardship remain the established ways to reduce selection pressure for resistance.