Question

Which of the following statements is true of selective toxicity? ______

A) Selective toxicity takes advantage of structural and/or metabolic differences between host and pathogen.
B) Selective toxicity takes advantage of metabolic differences between host and pathogen.
C) To be effective, an antimicrobial agent must be more toxic to the patient than the pathogen.
D) Selective toxicity takes advantage of structural differences between host and pathogen.
E) Antimicrobial agents must target structural differences between host and pathogen and be more toxic to the patient than the pathogen.

Answer 1

The true statement about selective toxicity is A) Selective toxicity takes advantage of structural and/or metabolic differences between host and pathogen, which allows antimicrobial agents to harm pathogenic microorganisms without hurting the host organism. The correct option is A

Step-by-step explanation:

The true statement about selective toxicity is: A) Selective toxicity takes advantage of structural and/or metabolic differences between host and pathogen. Selective toxicity is a critical characteristic of antimicrobial drugs, meaning that they must harm the microbial pathogens with minimal or no harm to the host organism. This concept is crucial because it underlines the importance of targeting pathways or components in pathogens that are different from those in human cells.

Antibacterial drugs, for instance, often target the bacterial cell wall's peptidoglycan layer, which human cells do not possess. Due to the structural and metabolic differences between prokaryotic bacterial cells and eukaryotic human cells, these drugs can inhibit or kill bacteria without damaging human tissues. However, finding antimicrobial agents that are selectively toxic to fungi, protozoa, and viruses is more challenging because these organisms have more similarities to human cells, making non-toxic selective targeting more difficult. The true statement about selective toxicity is: A) Selective toxicity takes advantage of structural and/or metabolic differences between host and pathogen.