Hello. I specifically began looking into the drug metronidazole over quarantine because I adopted
a German Shepherd puppy who had giardiasis, a parasitic infection. When I took him to the vet,
they prescribed him metronidazole a pill he took while eating his food. The first time
he took this medication it didn't work completely. Some of his symptoms decreased,
but it was evident that the antibiotic did not completely kill off the parasite.
When I took him back to the vet, he was prescribed the same medication just in a higher dose.
After the next round of antibiotics were given, his symptoms were gone showing that
the antibiotics had worked. My mother is a nurse practitioner and she informed me that
metronidazole is also prescribed in humans as well. This idea was very intriguing to me and
I became more interested in antibiotics and the different ways antibiotics can be used.
I'm Madisen Seastrum and I'm going to share a few things that I learned about metronidazole
with you today. I'd like to thank Dr. Smesko for mentoring me throughout this process.
Antibiotics are one of the most common drugs prescribed in healthcare. They kill
bacterial cells and prevent an infection. Antimicrobials achieve bacterial death
by preventing cellular respiration or inhibiting specific cellular functions. An antibiotic
is a low molecular substance produced by a microorganism that at a low concentration
inhibits or kills other microorganisms. An antimicrobial is any substance of natural,
semi-synthetic or synthetic origin that kills or inhibits the growth of microorganisms,
but causes little or no damage to the host. Antibiotics are classified into two groups based
off their method: bactericidal, or bacteriostatic. For this research we will specifically be looking
into bactericidal. Bactericidals inhibit DNA synthesis, RNA synthesis, cell wall synthesis and
more. Bactericidals are crucial for the killing of bacteria since bacteria often results in disease.
Table 1 to the right shows some of the examples of bacteriostatic and bactericidal antibiotics.
As you can see metronidazole is shown under the bactericidal section.
Metronidazole is known as a strong bactericidal and can be used to treat a multitude of different
infections. Some of these including bacterial and parasitic infection.
It is available in many different forms such as gel, cream and liquid and tablets
in which is the antibiotic that my dog was given.
Some of the uses for metronidazole include helping with bite wounds, clostridiodes, Crohn's disease,
post-surgical resection management, giardiasis, and more. Figure 3 to the
right shows the bacteria Giardia Lamblia, which was a parasite that my dog was infected with.
With metronidazole being said to be so effective, but yet so many doses may be needed
to completely get rid of the bacteria, antibiotic resistance must be considered. In recent research,
it was shown that metronidazole analogs have been used to help with antibiotic resistance. Aome of
the analogues used included MTZBR, MTZI, and MTZ itself. The researchers used multiple mechanisms
and reactions to gain analogs that will be given that will give promising results that would
help treat Giardiasis. In this specific research experiment, only metronidazole will be considered
to see its specific effectiveness without it being paired with other antibiotics or analogs. With the
idea that antibiotic resistance is so prevalent, I looked into a research study where metronidazole
resistance has been seen directly. It was stated that fifty percent of resistance cases found in
children in Africa were for metronidazole. Thus resistance rates in the pediatric population need
to be monitored, again showing the importance of metronidazole and its uses and effectiveness.
Specifically in my research project with Dr. Smesko, we will be looking into the
effectiveness of metronidazole when it is added to a variety of bacterial strains.
These both being gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. The gram-positive bacteria that will be
used will be staphylococcus aureus and for the gram-negative bacteria, e coli will be used,
both of these being easy to grow and easy to work with. Specifically in this research experiment,
metronidazole will be applied to these bacteria on which the drug will be dissolved so that a
few microliters will be applied to a paper disk and it will be applied to an agar plate
on which the bacteria will grow. Then the morphology of the bacteria will be observed
and a variety of metronidazole concentrations will be used to see how much is needed to
achieve cell death of the bacteria. Or in other words the metronidazole amount will be varied
to show how much metronidazole is needed for the drug to be effective. Hopefully this experiment
will show how effective metronidazole is and which bacteria are more resistant than others.
In addition to this hopefully it will help decide if metronidazole is the correct antibiotic
for treating these two strains of bacteria ,thus gaining knowledge upon how to combat bacteria
and infection more adequately. For this procedure, first the gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria
will be grown. The experimental group will involve both the bacterial strands being applied with
metronidazole and the bacteria will be observed two hours later under fluorescent microscope.
This will be done to observe any changes that there may be in the morphology of the
bacteria. If nothing has changed or if more of the drug needs to be added, it will be,and
then after two more hours the process will be continued until desired results are obtained.
The control group will be just bacteria with no metronidazole added. This bacteria will just grow
as the other bacteria hopefully shows results. The data will be recorded and hopefully knowledge
will be gained upon the mode of action of the drug and the zone of inhibition throughout the process.
Figure 4 and figure 5 show the cell shape of e coli and staphylococcus aureus.
Staphylococcus aureus is found on human skin. It can lead to skin and soft tissue infections such
as abscesses, boils and more. E coli are typically found in the intestines of people and animals,
and they can also be found in food. They can cause diarrhea,
urinary tract infections, respiratory illnesses and bloodstream infections.
When looking at the morphology changes, shape, size, structure and arrangement of bacterial cells
will be looked at. The basic shapes include spherical rod-like and helical. In certain
bacterial cells, they are arranged in pairs of clusters, chains, trachoma, and filaments.
All of these details will be looked at and they will be looked into when we observe the bacteria
before and after metronidazole is applied. Figure 6 to the left shows morphological changes
that occur to both e coli cells which are A and B, the top two, and staphylococcus aureus cells,
C and D, the bottom two, after they are altered by morphological changes. The cell wall and
the texture of the cells should be considered, this showing that hopefully in this experiment,
the cell wall will be altered and the texture of the cells should also be looked at.
This research has helped me to better understand antibiotics,
how they work against microorganisms, and antibiotic resistance.
These new understandings also help me to understand the issues that my dog Bentley had
been going through. I now better understand why antibiotics had to be given to him a second time,
and how strong certain parasites and bacteria are when it comes to resisting antibiotics. When
the procedure is completed this will also help to visually see how effective metronidazole is
against the two bacterial strands, thus giving more knowledge and gaining more knowledge upon
the drug's effectiveness. Additional studies may include the calculation of zone inhibition
for each strain exposed to various concentrations of metronidazole, investigation into resistance:
used exposed cells but still viable cells will be used to start additional colonies
and monitor drug concentration and the amount that is needed to cause cell death.