Antibiotic-resistant for ear infections

What is a middle ear infection?

The middle ear is the small part of your ear just inside your eardrum. when it gets infected liquids and air accumulate and apply pressure on the ear drum which causes ear pain.

What causes a middle ear infection?

A small tube connects your ear to your throat. A cold can cause this tube to swell. When the tube swells enough to become blocked, it can trap fluid inside your ear. This makes it a perfect place for germs to grow and cause an infection.

Ear infections happen mostly to young children because their tubes are smaller and closer to the nose which transmits the infection to the ear  and triggers  ear infection and get blocked more easily. but many adults also suffer from ear infections.

Antibiotics for ear infections

Bellow you would find information about a study made on the effects and resistants to antibiotics after  treating ear infections

Ear infections caused by more than one species of bacteria could be more persistent and antibiotic-resistant because one pathogen may be communicating with the other, encouraging it to bolster its defenses. Interrupting or removing that communication could be key to curing these infections. Researchers from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center publish their findings today in mBio, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

"In this study we show that communication between bacterial species promotes bacterial persistence and resistance to antibiotics, which are important considerations in the diagnosis, preventions and treatment of otitis media (OM)," says W. Edwrd Swords, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology and senior author of the study.

About 75% of children up to age four suffer from earache caused by the accumulation of liquids and air in the middle ear, divers and air travelers also suffer from the same problem. Otitis media  is one of the most common childhood infections and is the leading reason for pediatric office visits and new antibiotic prescriptions to children. Otitis media infections persist for long periods of time and are often resistant to antibiotics due to over use.

These chronic and recurrent cases of Otitis media involve the persistence of the bacteria within a biofilm community, a state in which they are highly resistant to both natural clearance by the immune system and antibiotic treatment.

How is a middle ear infection diagnosed?

Your doctor will talk to you about your child's symptoms. Then he or she will look into your child's ears. A special tool with a light lets the doctor see the eardrum and tell whether there is fluid behind it. This exam is rarely uncomfortable. It bothers some children more than others.

Epidemiological data indicate that the majority of chronic OM infections are polymicrobial in nature, meaning they are caused by more than one species of bacteria. Haemophilus influenzae and Moraxella catarrhalis are frequently found together in samples obtained from patients with chronic and recurrent OM.

"Interestingly, a recent study found M. catarrhalis to be more frequently associated with polymicrobial OM infections than from single-species OM infections. This suggests that the presence of other bacterial pathogens may impact the persistence of M. catarrhalis or the severity of disease caused by this species," says Swords.

In examining the dynamics between these two bacteria in culture and animal models, Swords and his colleagues discovered the H. influenzae secreted autoinducer-2 (AI-2), a chemical involved in an interbacterial method of communication known as quorum sensing, that promoted increased biofilm formation and antibiotic resistance in M. catarrhalis.

"We conclude that H. influenzae promotes M. catarrhalis persistence within polymicrobial infection biofilms via inter-species quorum signaling. AI-2 may therefore represent an ideal target for disruption of chronic polymicrobial infections," says Swords. "Moreover, these results strongly imply that successful vaccination against the unencapsulated H. influenzae strains that cause airway infections may also significantly impact chronic M. catarrhalis disease by removing a reservoir for the AI-2 signal that promotes M. catarrhalis persistence within biofilms."