Principle of treatment

Question 1 What are the ways to treat an infectious disease?

Question 2 What is inflammation?

Question 3 What are antibiotics?

Question 4 What are the ways to kill microbes?

Question 5 Why it is difficult to make anti-viral vaccine?

Principles of Treatment
There are 2 ways to treat infectious diseases
1)Reduce the effect of the disease
2)Kill the cause of disease

To reduce the effect of disease we provide treatment that will reduce the symptoms.The symptoms are because of inflammation.
We can take medicines that bring down fever,reduce pain or loose motion,take bed rest.
Such a kind of symptom- directed treatment is inadequate.Since it will not make the pathogen to go away.For that we have to kill the microbe itself

One way To kill microbes is to use medicines.Microbes can be classified into different categories.

Each of these group of micro-organism will have some essential biochemical life process which are peculiar to that group and not shared with other group.these processes may be pathway for the synthesis of new substance or respiration.

Our cells may make new substance by a mechanism different from that used by bacteria .We have to find a drug that blocks the bacterial synthesis pathway but does not affect our cellular pathway.This is achieved by antibiotic.
It is harder to make anti viral medicine than to make anti bacterial medicine.Because viruses have few biochemical mechanism of their own.They enter our cells and use our machinery for their life processes.There are few virus-specific targets to aim at.

There are few anti-viral drugs,for example,the drug that keep HIV infection under control.