Knowing how do Antibiotics work and fight the infection is an important step for treatment. Resistance is emerging rapidly to most classes and we have to control the use of Antibiotics and avoid misuse or overuse in both community and healthcare society.
Developing Antibiotics resistance has many unfavorable outcomes:
- Increase the rates of mortality and morbidity.
- More intervention in terms of surgical or other medical procedures to control the infection.
- Longer hospital stay or treatment duration and therefor higher costs.
- Higher costs.
- Losing the antibiotic makes the treatment options very low and many physicians might feel desperate for selecting an effective antibiotics for complicated cases.
So for different classes of Antibiotics, a quick tips for how they work in terms of mode of action:
The most common antibiotic classes and their mode of action:
| Antibiotic Class | Example | Mode of Action |
Aminoglycosides | Streptomycin | Inhibit protein synthesis |
Cephalosporins | Ceftazidime | Inhibit cell wall synthesis |
Chloramphenicol | Inhibit protein synthesis | |
Glycopeptides | Vancomycin | Inhibit cell wall synthesis |
Lincosamides | Clindamycin | Inhibit protein synthesis |
Macrolides | Erythromycin | Inhibit protein synthesis |
Penicillins | Ampicillin | Inhibit cell wall synthesis |
Oxazolidinones | Linezolid | Inhibit protein synthesis |
Streptogramins | Synercid | Inhibit protein synthesis |
Quinolones | Ciprofloxacin | Inhibit DNA synthesis |
Sulfonamides | Sulfamethoxazole | Inhibit Folic Acid synthesis |
Tetracyclines | Doxycycline | Inhibit protein synthesis |
Rifamycins | Rifampin | Inhibit RNA synthesis |