Resistant bacteria have renewed our interest in the aminoglycoside drugs. Evidence on the efficiency of aminoglycosides in their different clinical uses is available from numerous randomized controlled trials and has been accrued and examined in recent systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Their results show that aminoglycosides should not be added to broad-spectrum beta-lactams to achieve syne...

The reinitiation of DNA replication induced by a temperature shift in a dnaC(Ts) mutant of Escherichia coli was markedly inhibited by aminoglycoside antibiotics around the MIC in a short period. Protein synthesis continued for several minutes after the addition of aminoglycosides but was immediately blocked by chloramphenicol, suggesting that the inhibition of initiation of replication by amino...

In past decades, aminoglycosides have been commonly used to treat gram-negative infections as well as multi-drug resistant tuberculosis strains. However, in recent years, intrinsic, adaptive and acquired resistances have been raised against aminoglycosides which limits the uptake of these antibiotics. Acquired resistance to Acinetobacter baumannii responsible for nosocomial infection against am...

Aminoglycosides are hydrophilic, polycationic, aminecontaining carbohydrates that are usually composed of three to five rings. Most aminoglycosides are either natural products or derivatives of soil actinomycetes. They are often secreted by these actinomycetes as mixtures of closely related compounds. The polycationic aminoglycoside chemical structure results in a binding both to the anionic ou...

Bacterial infections are common in the neonates and are a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Sixty percent of preterm infants admitted to neonatal intensive care units received at least one antibiotic during the first week of life. Penicillins, aminoglycosides and cephalosporins comprised 53, 43 and 16%, respectively. Kinetic parameters such as the half-life (t1/2), clearance (Cl), and vol...

The stabilization of poly(dA).2poly(dT) triplex, a 22-base DNA triplex, and poly(rA).2poly(rU) triple helix by neomycin is reported. The melting temperatures, the association and dissociation kinetic parameters, and activation energies (E(on) and E(off)) for the poly(dA).2poly(dT) triplex in the presence of aminoglycosides and other triplex binding ligands were determined by UV thermal analysis...

Aminoglycosides are highly potent, broad-spectrum antibiotics with many desirable properties for the treatment of lifethreatening infections (28). Their history begins in 1944 with streptomycin and was thereafter marked by the successive introduction of a series of milestone compounds (kanamycin, gentamicin, and tobramycin) which definitively established the usefulness of this class of antibiot...

The attachment of alkyl and other hydrophobic groups to traditional antibacterial kanamycins and neomycins creates amphiphilic aminoglycosides with altered antimicrobial properties. In this review, we summarize the discovery of amphiphilic kanamycins that are antifungal, but not antibacterial, and that inhibit the growth of fungi by perturbation of plasma membrane functions. With low toxicities...