course of antibiotics

Examples of course of antibiotics in the following topics:

• Urinary Tract Infection (UTI)

  • In uncomplicated cases, a diagnosis may be made and treatment given based on symptoms alone without further laboratory confirmation, and treatment involves a short course of antibiotics such as nitrofurantoin or trimethoprim / sulfamethoxazole.
  • A longer course or intravenous antibiotics may be needed.
  • In those with frequent infections, a short course of antibiotics may be taken as soon as symptoms begin or long term antibiotics may be used as a preventative measure.
  • For those with recurrent infections, taking a short course of antibiotics when each infection occurs is associated with the lowest antibiotic use.
  • A prolonged course of daily antibiotics is also effective.

• Antibiotic Misuse

  • Antibiotic misuse is one factor responsible for the emergence of antimicrobial resistant bacterial strains.
  • With the introduction of antibiotics into medical practice, clinically-relevant bacteria have had to adopt resistance mechanisms as part of their survival strategy.
  • Developing new antibiotics and other treatments to keep pace with antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria is necessary.
  • Antibiotic misuse has contributed largely to the emergence of new resistant strains.
  • It can also be manifested by not finishing a course of antibiotics as prescribed (stopping the antibiotic before the infection is fully cleared from the body).

• Prostatitis

  • The antibiotics of choice should be bactericidal (e.g., quinolone) not bacteriostatic (e.g., tetracycline) if the infection is life-threatening.
  • Treatment of chronic prostatitis requires courses of antibiotic administration for one to two months or a longer course with low doses.
  • In these cases higher success rates of treatment are achieved when a combination of antibiotics is used.
  • The choice of antibiotic for chronic prostatitis also depends on its ability to penetrate the prostatic capsule.
  • In the case of acute prostatitis, the prostate-blood barrier is damaged by the infection so the penetrating ability of the antibiotic is not as important.

• Origins of Antimicrobial Drugs

  • The era of antimicrobials begins when Pasteur and Joubert discover that one type of bacteria could prevent the growth of another.
  • They did not know at that time that the reason one bacterium failed to grow was that the other bacterium was producing an antibiotic.
  • Technically, antibiotics are only those substances that are produced by one microorganism that kill, or prevent the growth, of another microorganism.
  • Now, most of these infections can be cured easily with a short course of antimicrobials.
  • The term antibiotic was first used in 1942 by Selman Waksman and his collaborators in journal articles to describe any substance produced by a microorganism that is antagonistic to the growth of other microorganisms in high dilution.

• Antimycobacterial Antibiotics

  • Antimycobacterial antibiotics are a class of antimicrobial drugs that target mycobacterium.
  • Antiomycobacterial antibiotics specifically target these types of microbes.
  • A type of antimycobacterial antibiotic includes the class of drugs used for tuberculosis (TB) treatment.
  • The use of multidrug therapies including dapsone, clofazimine and rifampicin were advantageous due to the low risk of antibiotic resistance.
  • Antimycobacterial antibiotics target mycobacterium.

• History of Antibiotic Therapy

• Antibiotic Classifications

  • Both of these closely related antibiotics have similar levels efficacy, although doxycycline has a slightly lower risk of adverse side effects.
  • Antibiotics can be divided into two classes based on their mechanism of action.
  • Bacteriostatic antibiotics limit the growth of bacteria by interfering with bacterial protein production, DNA replication, or other aspects of bacterial cellular metabolism.
  • "Narrow-spectrum" antibacterial antibiotics target specific types of bacteria, such as Gram-negative or Gram-positive bacteria, whereas broad-spectrum antibiotics affect a wide range of bacteria, usually both gram positive and gram negative cells.
  • Tetracycline antibiotics are protein synthesis inhibitors, inhibiting the binding of aminoacyl-tRNA to the mRNA-ribosome complex.

• Kirby-Bauer Disk Susceptibility Test

  • Kirby-Bauer testing measures sensitivity of bacteria to antibiotics by culturing bacteria on solid growth media surrounding sources of drug.
  • Then, a known quantity of bacteria are grown overnight on agar (solid growth media) plates in the presence of a thin wafer that contains a known amount of a relevant antibiotic.
  • A larger zone of inhibition around an antibiotic-containing disk indicates that the bacteria are more sensitive to the antibiotic in the disk.
  • If the observed zone of inhibition is greater than or equal to the size of the standard zone, the microorganism is considered to be sensitive to the antibiotic.
  • The size of a zone of inhibition in a KB test is inversely related to the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC), which is the amount of antibiotic required to prevent bacterial growth in an overnight culture.

• Experimental Epidemiology

  • In observational studies, nature is allowed to "take its course", as epidemiologists observe from the sidelines.
  • This strategy might be used to test whether or not a particular antibiotic is effective against a particular disease-causing organism.
  • One group of infected individuals is divided randomly so that some receive the antibiotic and others receive a placebo—a "false" drug that is not known to have any medical effect.
  • If people in the group receiving the antibiotic recover more rapidly than those in the other group, it may logically be concluded that the variable—antibiotic treatment—made the difference.
  • Thus, the antibiotic is said to be effective.

• Antibiotics and Selective Toxicity

  • Antibiotics are able to selectively target specific types of bacteria without harming the infected host.
  • Synthetic antibiotic chemotherapy as a science and development of antibacterials began in Germany with Paul Ehrlich in the late 1880s.
  • Antibiotics are commonly classified based on their mechanism of action, chemical structure, or spectrum of activity.
  • More specifically, narrow spectrum antibiotics target specific types of bacteria, such as Gram-negative or Gram-positive bacteria, whereas broad spectrum antibiotics affect a wide range of bacteria.
  • Despite the wide variety of known antibiotics, less than 1% of antimicrobial agents have medical or commercial value.