• Question: what would you say is the hardest microbe to get eliminate from the body?

    Asked by anon-230938 to Tom, Steven, Jessica, Haafizah, Clio, Bruno Silvester on 19 Nov 2019. This question was also asked by anon-231240.
    • Photo: Bruno Silvester Lopes

      Bruno Silvester Lopes answered on 19 Nov 2019:

      I will first rephrase your question: what would you say is the hardest harmful microbe to get eliminate from the body?

      This is because our body has a lot of good bacteria and we cant live without them. According to me Mycobacterium tuberculosis is very very difficult to get rid of because it grows ultra slowly (about 2 to 3 weeks) and is very persistent if someone is infected with it. Last year alone, 10 million fell ill from tuberculosis and 1.6 million died worldwide.

    • Photo: Jessica Mitchell

      Jessica Mitchell answered on 19 Nov 2019:

      We dont want to eliminate microbes from our bodies as there are lots of really helpful microbes out there that help us digest food and look after our immune system.

      However if you have a nasty microbe like the bacteria that causes TB you will probably want to get rid of it as it can make you feel very ill. There are antibiotic drugs that can help but TB bacteria is starting to become resistant to these drugs and so it can be very hard to get rid of TB.

    • Photo: Clio Andreae

      Clio Andreae answered on 20 Nov 2019:

      TB and Burkholderia pseudomallei are difficult bad bacteria to get rid of in the body and infection relapse is seen in about 10% of patients. These bacteria tend to hide themselves away in bundles of human cells in a anaerobic/dormant state which often means antibiotics don’t work on them. Treatment for patients with B. pseudomallei is very long (6 months in some cases).

Comments