6 Antibiotics Against Endocarditis –

“Bacterial infections are becoming increasingly resistant to existing antibiotics, and as the number of patients who have succumbed to these infections rises, the number of new antibiotics being developed continues to plummet.” This extract from a letter addressed to President Barack Obama by the president of Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) attests to the urgent need for new therapeutic options to fight multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria. Drug-resistant infections and related morbidity and mortality are on the rise in the United States and around the world. Despite the growing antibiotic resistance among Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogens causing severe infections in hospital and community settings, the number of new antibacterial drugs approved for marketing in the United States continues to decrease. In addition to this worrying situation, only a few novel therapeutics for drug-resistant infections are in the drug development pipeline (Boucher et al., 2009; European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, 2009). Reports of bacterial isolates resistant to almost all available antibiotics highlight the crucial need for new antibiotic therapies, especially for Gram-negative infections (Maltezou, 2009). Recently, IDSA and United States authorities have developed creative incentives to stimulate new antibacterial research and development (Infectious Diseases Society of America, 2010).