Mode of Action for Antibiotic Classes – Quick tips

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