Commonly Used Antibiotics

November 24, 2023 by Josh Farkas.

  The world needs ‘antibiotic guardians’ to safeguard their future use

The case for a clarion call is clear: overuse and misuse of antibiotics in humans, animals, and the food production industry has seen bacterial resistance to antibiotics surge in recent years. Without antibiotics, treatments that we take for granted for common diseases such as pneumonia or urinary tract infections will be lost. Effectively, we are seeing the end of modern medicine slowly being played out. But we can act together to alter the situation.

  Wait, There’s Hope! Here’s How Humans Might Save Antibiotics

Dozens of hospital networks, both giant and small, pledged to reduce the prescriptions they write in-house, to keep from encouraging resistance. Huge retailers committed to tracking animal antibiotic use; Walmart, for instance, agreed to set guidelines for the suppliers that funnel meat to its more than 5,000 stores. Pharmaceutical manufacturers including Merck, one of the few US-based companies still making antibiotics, laid out a plan to invest more in basic research on new compounds. Fifty-five pharma and biotech companies promised to develop better rapid tests, which prevent unnecessary prescriptions, including Accelerate Diagnostics, based in Arizona, which committed a $100 million program. Two manufacturers of veterinary vaccines announced they would educate veterinarians on alternatives to using antibiotics in farm animals.

  What Are The Pros And Cons Of Taking Antibiotics?

“It is important that you protect yourself and your family by only taking antibiotics that are prescribed to you when your doctor advises you to do so,” expresses Dr. Boozer, who is also a family medicine physician at Keck Medicine of USC – Glendale and Pasadena. “Sharing antibiotics or taking leftover medications from a previous illness is never advised.”

 How Do Antibiotics And Vaccines Affect Nature?

Antibiotics create selective pressure on a wide range of bacteria wherever they are used. Humans naturally host large numbers of bacteria. These are essential to our health and killing them off repeatedly risks many long-term health problems, including immune disorders, damage to the gut, and increased vulnerability to infections.

 Modern Antibiotics in Ancient Egyptian Civilization?

When I think about the origins of antibiotics, I think of Alexander Fleming and his discovery of penicillin in 1928. However, I have, until recently, failed to consider the fact that bacteria and fungi produce their own antibiotics..

 Older Americans Are Awash in Antibiotics

The drugs are not just overprescribed. They often pose special risks to older patients, including tendon problems, nerve damage and mental health issues.

 Top 10 Antibiotic Mistakes in the ED

EMRA*Caster Alex Kaminsky sits down with Dr. Bryan Hayes, ED clinical pharmacist to discuss pearls and pitfalls regarding antibiotic use in the ED - meanwhile dispelling common antibiotic myths and misconceptions along the way.

 Weird Science: Penicillin and the Cell Wall

Antibiotics are highly specific to a certain bacterial function, and are not helpful for treating non-bacterial illnesses. Viruses are unaffected by antibiotics because they do not have peptidoglycan cell walls or ribosomes, and they do not replicate their own DNA.

Antibiotic Resistance: A Crisis of Our Own Making

Antibiotics have saved untold millions of lives. But through our overuse we are reducing the number of people who can be saved by this little medical miracle.

Antibiotics: Friend or Foe?

Being aware of antibiotic resistance and improving prescription guidelines has become an international priority. So how do we fix this? Education is a good start.

A New Drug in the Age of Antibiotic Resistance

Authorities warn that overuse of such medications has created a public-health disaster. Now, researchers say they've discovered a compound that could slow the clock on the crisis.

Bacteria or Virus? New Tests May Identify What’s Causing Your Infection

Research holds promise for treating respiratory illness and limiting overuse of antibiotics.

For the First Time, Antibiotic Use in Farm Animals Drops

Even with the decline in this year’s antibiotics sales, it’s worth keeping the larger context in mind. Between 2009, when the FDA first began tracking sales, and 2016, the overall change was actually a 9 percent increase. There is still a ways to go.

Hunting for Antibiotics in the World’s Dirtiest Places

We continue to take antibiotics with abandon (nearly a third of antibiotic prescriptions in the U.S. aren’t actually needed) and feed huge quantities of them to farm animals. And pharmaceutical companies—daunted by how quickly resistance can undermine drugs that may take a decade and a billion dollars to develop—are not rushing to fill the gap. That’s where Roberts, a 43-year-old microbiologist from central England, comes in.

Saving Antibiotics So That Antibiotics Can Save Lives

Misuse and overuse have blunted their impact. We need to be smarter about how we deploy and monitor them.

Should Antibiotics Be Taken Preventively?

When I saw John's ziplock full of military-prescribed doxy, I wondered how many other soldiers were taking the same precautions.

The Antibiotics Problem in Meat

A new study suggests that a consumer demand for chicken and pork in places like India, Russia, China, and Brazil will help drive a large increase in overuse of the drugs by 2030. Is there anything we can do about it?

The New Conundrum About When to Stop Antibiotics

Ending treatment earlier may help prevent dangerous antibiotic resistance, but it’s not the best course of action all the time.

The real story behind penicillin

The discovery of penicillin, one of the world’s first antibiotics, marks a true turning point in human history — when doctors finally had a tool that could completely cure their patients of deadly infectious diseases.

The State of the World's Antibiotics, 2015

Latest global review on antibiotic use, resistance, and policies.

Viruses Are the Antibiotics of the Future

Although Bacteriophages have proven to be an effective alternative to antibiotics for treating infections caused by these superbugs, their adoption in the United States and Western Europe has been incredibly slow.

We Will Miss Antibiotics When They’re Gone

Already, more than 23,000 people in the United States are estimated to die every year from resistant bacteria. That death toll will grow as microbes develop new mechanisms to defeat the drugs that, for decades, have kept infections at bay. We are on the cusp of what the World Health Organization calls a “post-antibiotic era.” And we will miss antibiotics when they’re gone.

We're Running Out of Antibiotics

It’s difficult to imagine a world without antibiotics. They cure diseases that killed our forebears in droves, and enable any number of medical procedures and treatments that we now take for granted. Yet in 1945, while accepting a Nobel Prize for discovering penicillin, Alexander Fleming warned of a future in which antibiotics had been used with abandon and bacteria had grown resistant to them. Today, this future is imminent.

A brief history of the antibiotic era: lessons learned and challenges for the future

This article gives a very brief overview of the antibiotic era, beginning from the discovery of first antibiotics until the present day situation, which is marred by the emergence of hard-to-treat multiple antibiotic-resistant infections.

Antibiotics: Practice Pearls for the Emergency Department Physician

In general, antibiotic therapy can be broadly classified into 3 types: empiric, definitive, and prophylactic. In the practice of emergency medicine, empiric therapy is often required. There are a number of host and drug factors that must be considered in initiating antibiotic therapy.

Antimicrobial Use in the Emergency Department – Pearls and Pitfalls

This article is designed to guide ED providers towards selecting the best empiric antimicrobial regimen for infections commonly treated in the ED.

Do Antibiotics Affect The Morning After Pill? Ask Ella

The good news is that most antibiotics can be taken with both ellaOne or levonorgestrel without making it any less effective.

Hold Up On Some of Those Antibiotic Combinations

Here's a rather unnerving article on using combinations of antibiotics to treat disease. There have of course been a lot of studies in this area, but they have tended to look at easier-to-measure outcomes like effects on bacterial growth.

Pharm 101: Ceftriaxone

Third generation cephalosporin. Halts peptidoglycan synthesis, leading to inhibition of bacterial growth, and ultimately cell death (bacteriocidal). Beta-lactam antibiotics kill bacterial cells only when they are actively growing and synthesising cell wall.