Question

.............,Viruses and bacteria can infect human cells. Bacteria are living organisms, while viruses are not. How do you think the treatment for viral and bacterial illnesses differ? How do you think they affect healthy body cells? Explain your response.

Answer 1

Answer:

Question 1.  For bacterial infections is used antibiotics and for virus infection are used antiviral drugs.

Question 2.  Healthy body cells are little effects because the drugs are selective for virus or bacteria.

Explanation:

Viruses are particles of DNA or RNA with envelope or not. This is not a living organism but can infect human cells (they always need cells for reproduction). The antivirals are drugs design for inhibiting viral development, which ones are designed to recognize specific molecules (for example proteins) of the virus avoiding the host molecules.  Antivirals are designed to have different targets: inhibitor of viral attachment ( when the infections are initiated the virus attaches to host cells), inhibitor od viral entry ( avoid the virus enter the host cells after attachment, inhibitor of gene expression ( inhibit the virus reproduction when the virus is in the cells host) etc. For all of these antiviral drugs, the targets are specific in the virus and not in human cells.

Bacteria are a unicellular microorganism that can cause an infection in humans (they can enter human cells or not). Antibiotics are specific drugs for bacterial infections having selective toxicity, (this means kills or inhibit the growth of bacteria and not the host.) Antibiotics have a different mode of actions (example: inhibit cell wall synthesis, inhibit DNA synthesis, etc.) but first, the antibiotic recognizes specific structures in the bacteria to make an effect.

In both cases (antivirals or antibiotics) recognize the specific target in bacteria or viruses and not in host cells. Unlike in the cases of parasitic or fungi infections, as those are eukaryotic cells (like human cells) also are toxic to human cells, because the recognition targets could be the same and the dugs can’t distinguish between parasite or fungus from human cells.

Answer 2

By their nature, they can be either "good" (beneficial) or "bad" (harmful) for the health of plants, humans, and other animals that come into contact with them. A virus is acellular (has no cell structure) and requires a living host to survive; it causes illness in its host, which causes an immune response.Bacteria are alive, while ...