On 17/02/2013 02:41, Arfa Daily wrote:
Funny old things, antibiotics. I recently had 7 weeks of the buggers to
shift an infection that got into my leg. The doc had to keep giving them
to me to ensure that every last trace of the infection had gone.
Apparently, this is why they tell you that you must complete the course,
even if what you are trying to fix appears to have cleared up, because
if you don't kill it all, what's left mutates, and becomes resistant to
the antibiotic that you were using, so you then have to start again with
a different one ... :-(

That's not _quite_ what happens.

If you take the course and stop early the ones that are left are the
ones most resistant to the antibiotics. Stop taking the pills, and give
the bugs a chance to breed up, then you have a collection of fairly
resistant ones. Then there's more chance of one of them mutating to be
resistant.

Andy