Ciprofloxacin is a fluoroquinolone antibiotic used to treat a number of bacterial infections. This includes bone and joint infections, intra-abdominal infections, certain types of infectious diarrhea, respiratory tract infections, skin infections, typhoid fever, and urinary tract infections, among others. For some infections it is used in addition to other antibiotics. It can be taken by mouth, as eye drops, as ear drops, or intravenously.
Levofloxacin, sold under the brand name Levaquin among others, is an antibiotic medication. It is used to treat a number of bacterial infections including acute bacterial sinusitis, pneumonia, H. pylori, urinary tract infections, chronic prostatitis, and some types of gastroenteritis. Along with other antibiotics it may be used to treat tuberculosis, meningitis, or pelvic inflammatory disease. Use is generally recommended only when other options are not available. It is available by mouth, intravenously, and in eye drop form.
Oxytetracycline is a broad-spectrum tetracycline antibiotic, the second of the group to be discovered.
Campylobacteriosis is among the most common infections caused by a bacterium in humans, often as a foodborne illness. It is caused by the Campylobacter bacterium, most commonly C. jejuni. It produces an inflammatory, sometimes bloody, diarrhea or dysentery syndrome, and usually cramps, fever and pain.
Ofloxacin is a quinolone antibiotic useful for the treatment of a number of bacterial infections. When taken by mouth or injection into a vein, these include pneumonia, cellulitis, urinary tract infections, prostatitis, plague, and certain types of infectious diarrhea. Other uses, along with other medications, include treating multidrug resistant tuberculosis. An eye drop may be used for a superficial bacterial infection of the eye and an ear drop may be used for otitis media when a hole in the ear drum is present.
Norfloxacin, sold under the brand name Noroxin among others, is an antibiotic that belongs to the class of fluoroquinolone antibiotics. It is used to treat urinary tract infections, gynecological infections, inflammation of the prostate gland, gonorrhea and bladder infection. Eye drops were approved for use in children older than one year of age.
Moxifloxacin is an antibiotic, used to treat bacterial infections, including pneumonia, conjunctivitis, endocarditis, tuberculosis, and sinusitis. It can be given by mouth, by injection into a vein, and as an eye drop.
Sparfloxacin is a fluoroquinolone antibiotic used in the treatment of bacterial infections. It has a controversial safety profile.
Pefloxacin is a quinolone antibiotic used to treat bacterial infections. Pefloxacin has not been approved for use in the United States.
Topoisomerase inhibitors are chemical compounds that block the action of topoisomerases, which are broken into two broad subtypes: type I topoisomerases (TopI) and type II topoisomerases (TopII). Topoisomerase plays important roles in cellular reproduction and DNA organization, as they mediate the cleavage of single and double stranded DNA to relax supercoils, untangle catenanes, and condense chromosomes in eukaryotic cells. Topoisomerase inhibitors influence these essential cellular processes. Some topoisomerase inhibitors prevent topoisomerases from performing DNA strand breaks while others, deemed topoisomerase poisons, associate with topoisomerase-DNA complexes and prevent the re-ligation step of the topoisomerase mechanism. These topoisomerase-DNA-inhibitor complexes are cytotoxic agents, as the un-repaired single- and double stranded DNA breaks they cause can lead to apoptosis and cell death. Because of this ability to induce apoptosis, topoisomerase inhibitors have gained interest as therapeutics against infectious and cancerous cells.
Cross-resistance is when something develops resistance to several substances that have a similar mechanism of action. For example, if a certain type of bacteria develops resistance to one antibiotic, that bacteria will also have resistance to several other antibiotics that target the same protein or use the same route to get into the bacterium. A real example of cross-resistance occurred for nalidixic acid and ciprofloxacin, which are both quinolone antibiotics. When bacteria developed resistance to ciprofloxacin, they also developed resistance to nalidixic acid because both drugs inhibit topoisomerase, a key enzyme in DNA replication. Due to cross-resistance, antimicrobial treatments like phage therapy can quickly lose their efficacy against bacteria. This makes cross-resistance an important consideration in designing evolutionary therapies.
Temafloxacin is a fluoroquinolone antibiotic drug which was withdrawn from sale in the United States shortly after its approval in 1992 because of serious adverse effects resulting in three deaths. It is not marketed in Europe.
Flumequine is a synthetic fluoroquinolone antibiotic used to treat bacterial infections. It is a first-generation fluoroquinolone antibacterial that has been removed from clinical use and is no longer being marketed. The marketing authorization of flumequine has been suspended throughout the EU. It kills bacteria by interfering with the enzymes that cause DNA to unwind and duplicate. Flumequine was used in veterinarian medicine for the treatment of enteric infections, as well as to treat cattle, swine, chickens, and fish, but only in a limited number of countries. It was occasionally used in France to treat urinary tract infections under the trade name Apurone. However this was a limited indication because only minimal serum levels were achieved.
Prulifloxacin is an older synthetic antibiotic of the fluoroquinolone class undergoing clinical trials prior to a possible NDA submission to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It is a prodrug which is metabolized in the body to the active compound ulifloxacin. It was developed over two decades ago by Nippon Shinyaku Co. and was patented in Japan in 1987 and in the United States in 1989.
Chronic bacterial prostatitis is a bacterial infection of the prostate gland. It should be distinguished from other forms of prostatitis such as acute bacterial prostatitis and chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CPPS).
Clinafloxacin is an investigational fluoroquinolone antibiotic. Despite its promising antibiotic activity, the clinical development of clinafloxacin has been hampered by its risk for inducing serious side effects.
Plasmid-mediated resistance is the transfer of antibiotic resistance genes which are carried on plasmids. Plasmids possess mechanisms that ensure their independent replication as well as those that regulate their replication number and guarantee stable inheritance during cell division. By the conjugation process, they can stimulate lateral transfer between bacteria from various genera and kingdoms. Numerous plasmids contain addiction-inducing systems that are typically based on toxin-antitoxin factors and capable of killing daughter cells that don't inherit the plasmid during cell division. Plasmids often carry multiple antibiotic resistance genes, contributing to the spread of multidrug-resistance (MDR). Antibiotic resistance mediated by MDR plasmids severely limits the treatment options for the infections caused by Gram-negative bacteria, especially family Enterobacteriaceae. The global spread of MDR plasmids has been enhanced by selective pressure from antimicrobial medications used in medical facilities and when raising animals for food.
Quinolone antibiotics constitute a large group of broad-spectrum bacteriocidals that share a bicyclic core structure related to the substance 4-quinolone. They are used in human and veterinary medicine to treat bacterial infections, as well as in animal husbandry, specifically poultry production.
Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the bacterium that causes the sexually transmitted infection gonorrhea, has developed antibiotic resistance to many antibiotics. The bacteria was first identified in 1879.
Finafloxacin (Xtoro) is a fluoroquinolone antibiotic. In the United States, it is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat acute otitis externa caused by the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus.
