In the future, doctors may think twice about prescribing antibiotics for bacterial infections, as strains are becoming more powerful and resistant to current methods of treatment.

Since their discovery in the 1930s, antibiotics have been used to treat all types of bacterial infections such as pneumonia, meningitis and tuberculosis. Today, doctors are worried they are losing their effectiveness.

Nathaniel Ratnasamy, infectious disease physician at McFarland Clinic, 1215 Duff Ave., defined antibiotics as a group of chemicals, natural or synthetic, which have antibacterial, viral or fungal activity that helps the body restore balance and health.

When each new strain of bacteria becomes stronger, antibiotics become less effective in fighting that bacteria, he said.

In the United States, deaths due to infectious diseases increased 58 percent between 1980 and 1992, according to the Mayo Clinic Web site. A large portion of this increase may be caused by the increased resistance of once effectual antibiotics.

There is no way to stop this increased resistance, but there are methods doctors can use to slow down the process, Ratnasamy said.

“It is important to keep antibiotic use down,” he said. “You want to use them for appropriate situations.”

Antibiotics used to treat respiratory problems have been frequently prescribed by doctors.

Ratnasamy cited a study in England involving patients with sinus infections. One group was given antibiotics to stave off infections while the other was given no treatment. There was no difference in the overall outcome of the two groups.

Ratnasamy gave ways to overcome resistance.

“Compliance with the regimen is important, but some people forget. It’s also important to not overuse one type or another,” he said.

Mary Falk, pharmacist at Drug Town, 500 Main St., believes trends are improving.

“Doctors haven’t been prescribing antibiotics as much,” she said. “They are going back to simple antibiotics that aren’t as broad spectrum. By going back to simpler antibiotics, doctors are slowing [the resistance] down.”

Falk said she sees resistance to antibiotics as inevitable.

“It is just the nature of bacteria. It will happen, there is nothing we can do,” she said.

Ratnasamy said he believes that if antibiotics become useless, doctors will turn to previous methods of treatment.

“If we run out of options it will mean going back to the pre-antibiotic era when we did amputations and a more primitive use of treatment,” he said. “There are many things that we handle so easily now that people used to die from.”

Ratnasamy remains optimistic about the discovery of new treatments.

“Just because now we don’t have anything in the lab doesn’t mean tomorrow there won’t be a breakthrough,” he said.