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why antibiotics do not work against viral infections?

Antibiotics work to kill bacteria.Bacteria are single-cell organisms. If bacteria make it past ourimmune systems and start reproducing inside our bodies, they cause disease. We want to kill the bacteria to eliminate the disease.

Certain bacteria produce chemicals that damage or disable parts of our bodies. In an earinfection, for example, bacteria have gotten into the inner ear. The body is working to fight the bacteria, but the immune system's natural processes produce inflammation. Inflammation in your ear is painful. So you take an antibiotic to kill the bacteria and eliminate the inflammation.

An antibiotic is a selective poison. It has been chosen so that it will kill the desired bacteria, but not the cells in your body. Each different type of antibiotic affects different bacteria in different ways. For example, an antibiotic might inhibit a bacterium's ability to turn glucose into energy, or its ability to construct its cell wall. When this happens, the bacterium dies instead of reproducing. At the same time, the antibiotic acts only on the bacterium's cell-wall-building mechanism, not on a normal cell's.

Antibiotics do not work on viruses because viruses are not alive. A bacterium is a living, reproducing lifeform. A virus is just a piece of DNA (or RNA). A virus injects its DNA into a living cell and has that cell reproduce more of the viral DNA. With a virus there is nothing to "kill," so antibiotics don't work on it.

 

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thanxx himanshu

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Antibiotics cannot be used to target viruses as antibiotics target various cellular processes in the body but viruses do not have any cellular mechanism of their own and are non living when they are outside the cell.

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 Antibiotics are used to hinder the biochemical pathways used by the bacteria or other pathogens, but they are ineffictive against viruses because viruses don't use any biochemical pathways.

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 antibiotics work in two different ways. They either blocks the cell wall formation of bacteria or else stop them from multiplying. Since virus don't have their cell wall and cellular machinery so the antibiotics are not effective against virus.

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bacteria has its own metabolic systems by which we can use anti biotics and stop its metabolic system.
where as virus dont have metabolic system and uses the metabolism of the host .
therefore anti biotics dont give any reaction on viral infections.
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  • Antibiotics act by blocking the biochemical pathways of the bacteria and the bacteria eventually dies.
  • For example- Penicillin is an antibiotic. It stops the cell wall formation of the bacteria. It blocks the chemical reaction required for cell wall formation.
  • Viruses do not have such biochemical pathway of their own, instead they utilise the machinery of host cell to complete their life cycle.​
  • Therefore, antibiotics are not effective against viruses.
Hope it helps Sweta Simran :)
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viruses do not use the pathways which the bacteria uses and therefore antibiotics do not work against viral infections
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Virus do not contain protoplasm and use the protoplasm of  the host for completion of their life cycle.Antibiotics are not able to work against them as antibiotic usually stop bacterial growth by disturbing their life cycle but in case of virus, the host cell has to be effected in order to stop viral growth.
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