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Glycopeptide antibiotics are a class of drugs of microbial origin that are composed of glycosylated cyclic or polycyclic nonribosomal peptides.Significant glycopeptide antibiotics include the anti-infective antibiotics vancomycin, teicoplanin, telavancin, ramoplanin, avoparcin and decaplanin, corbomycin, complestatin and the antitumor antibiotic bleomycin.
Vancomycin is a glycopeptide antibiotic medication used to treat certain bacterial infections. [7] It is administered intravenously (injection into a vein) to treat complicated skin infections, bloodstream infections, endocarditis, bone and joint infections, and meningitis caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. [8]
The antimicrobial spectrum of an antibiotic can be determined by testing its antimicrobial activity against a wide range of microbes in vitro. Nonetheless, the range of microorganisms which an antibiotic can kill or inhibit in vivo may not always be the same as the antimicrobial spectrum based on data collected in vitro. [2] [5]
Severe infections typically require IV antibiotics that cover more pathogens, such as gram positive organisms, gram negative organisms, and obligate anaerobes to allow for better treatment outcomes. [4] Total antibiotic treatment of severe infections should be approximately 2–3 weeks or more, depending on how extensive the infection is. [5]
In pharmacokinetics, a loading dose is an initial higher dose of a drug that may be given at the beginning of a course of treatment before dropping down to a lower maintenance dose. [1] A loading dose is most useful for drugs that are eliminated from the body relatively slowly, i.e. have a long systemic half-life.
A change to directed therapy may be associated with a change in antimicrobials, a change in the duration of treatment, or the cessation of unnecessary antimicrobials. [ 2 ] Directed therapy is considered important because it ensures a person is completely treated for an infection, and because it can help lower the rate of antimicrobial resistance .
Therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) is a branch of clinical chemistry and clinical pharmacology that specializes in the measurement of medication levels in blood.Its main focus is on drugs with a narrow therapeutic range, i.e. drugs that can easily be under- or overdosed. [1]
Due to shorter duration of studies, this review did not allow for long-term positive or negative effects to be assessed. [27] Exenatide (also Exendin-4, marketed as Byetta) is the first GLP-1 agonist approved for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. Exenatide is not an analogue of GLP but rather a GLP agonist.