Why Would It Be More Difficult to Treat Diseases in Humans

question 27

Multiple Choice

Why would it be more difficult to treat diseases in humans caused by members of the Eukarya than diseases caused by the Bacteria?

• A) Multicellular organisms always have their own immune systems for protection, so any treatment we develop needs to overcome this built-in protection mechanism.
• B) Since bacteria are so much simpler (being single-celled) than multi-cellular eukaryotic microbes, they are naturally easier to kill off.
• C) Eukaryotic microbes use many of the same enzymes and systems as humans, so we lose the ability to target certain molecules that might be present ONLY in the cell type we want to eliminate. 
• D) Eukaryotic microbes (unlike prokaryotes) often secrete compounds that breakdown and eliminate drugs used against them. This makes them much harder to effectively eliminate than bacteria.
• E) Eukaryotic pathogens multiply much more effectively in a human host than bacterial pathogens do; they attain extremely high numbers in the host, making it very difficult to get rid of them.

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Definitions:

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Capacity Limitations

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