Modern Treatment of Disease Flashcards
All 16 cards in this deck
What did Alexander Fleming discover in 1928?
Penicillin — he noticed a mould killing the bacteria in a Petri dish in his laboratory at St Mary's Hospital, London.
What was the contribution of Florey and Chain to penicillin?
From 1939 at Oxford they purified penicillin and proved it worked on patients (Albert Alexander, 1941), then won funding to mass produce it.
Why was penicillin mass produced from 1942–44?
The US government funded drug companies to make it for wounded troops after America entered the war; by D-Day (1944) there was enough for all Allied casualties.
What was the second magic bullet, who developed it, and when?
Prontosil, developed by Gerhard Domagk in 1932. It cured some types of blood poisoning, and its active ingredient (a sulphonamide) was later used against pneumonia.
Why have antibiotic-resistant bacteria become a problem?
Overuse of antibiotics has allowed bacteria to evolve resistance (e.g. MRSA), so some infections are now hard to treat.
Why did Fleming not develop penicillin further after publishing his findings in 1929?
He had no funding to continue, and he did not believe penicillin would work inside a living body.
Why was penicillin hard to produce in large amounts at first?
The mould made only tiny amounts of the drug, so one patient needed vast quantities, grown slowly in many containers, which was costly.
When did British drug companies begin mass-producing penicillin, and why not earlier?
- British factories were too stretched by war production to take it on, so in 1941 Florey had turned to American drug companies instead.
Who shared the 1945 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for penicillin?
Alexander Fleming, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain.
What impact did the mass production of penicillin have on the pharmaceutical industry?
It grew rapidly into a huge, profitable industry, with companies investing in research to find new drugs, e.g. streptomycin (1944) for tuberculosis.
What was the thalidomide tragedy?
A drug given to pregnant women for morning sickness around 1957–61 caused about 10,000 babies to be born with deformed limbs. It led to far stricter drug testing and licensing.
Give two alternative treatments used in Britain today.
Any two: acupuncture, homeopathy, herbal remedies, osteopathy, hypnotherapy.
True or false? Antibiotics can be used to treat viral infections such as flu.
False. Antibiotics only kill bacteria, and using them when they are not needed helps bacteria become resistant.
Give one way chance played a part in the discovery of penicillin.
Mould spores blew into Fleming's laboratory and landed on a Petri dish he had left out — and he happened to notice that the bacteria around the mould had been killed.
True or false? Albert Alexander, the first patient treated with penicillin by Florey and Chain in 1941, made a full recovery.
False. He improved dramatically but the supply of penicillin ran out and he died.
Who worked out the structure of DNA, and when?
Francis Crick and James Watson at Cambridge in 1953, helped by Rosalind Franklin's X-ray images. Understanding DNA later led to genetic screening and gene therapy.