Question

What are the principles of treatment of infectious diseases?

Answer 1

There are two ways to treat an infectious (communicable) disease. These are:
(i) To reduce the effects of the disease : It can be done by providing symptomatic treatment. We can provide treatment that will reduce the symptoms. For instance, we can take medicines that bring down fever, reduce pain or loose motions. We can also have bed rest to conserve our energy. These steps will enable us to focus on healing. However, such a symptom-directed treatment by itself is not sufficient as it will not remove the disease-causing microbes from the body. To cure the disease, we need to kill the microbes.
(ii) To kill the cause of the disease, i.e., pathogens : The most common method to kill disease-causing microbes is to use medicines that kill microbes. The disease-causing microbes are classified into different groups such as viruses, bacteria, fungi and protozoans. Each of these groups of microbes have some essential biochemical life processes which are peculiar to that group and not shared with the other groups. Our cells have different pathways than the ones used by these microbe groups. Therefore, we find a drug that blocks; for example, the bacterial biochemical path way without affecting our own. This is what is achieved by antibiotics. Similarly, there are drugs that kill protozoans, e.g., malarial parasite.