Following the discovery of the first analog of penicillin by A. Fleming (1929), the ┚-lactam antibiotics are still a developing group of chemotherapeutics and are used in treatment of majority of diseases with bacterial etiology. ┚-lactam antibiotics have a broad spectrum of antibacterial activity, favourable pharmacokinetic parameters and low side effects. In ┚lactam therapy two main problems ...

b-Lactam or azetidin-2-one is an important structural motif of the penicillin, cephalosporin, carbapenem, and carbecephem classes of antibiotics.1 Naturally occurring as well as synthetic monobactams, such as nocardicins and tabtoxin, are also known for their unique antibacterial activities.2e4 Besides their importance as the key structural component of b-lactam antibiotics, b-lactams have been...

Various mechanisms for the alkaline hydrolysis of aza-b-lactam (na), oxo-b-lactam (oa) and thio-b-lactam compounds (sa) were analysed on the basis of PM3 calculations in order to identify potential differences with classical b-lactam antibiotics. Changes in the tetrahedral intermediate were studied via the cleavage of not only the bond between atoms at 7 and 4 as in classical b-lactam antibioti...

The SOS response, a conserved regulatory network in bacteria that is induced in response to DNA damage, has been shown to be associated with the emergence of resistance to antibiotics. Previously, we demonstrated that heterogeneous (HeR) MRSA strains, when exposed to sub-inhibitory concentrations of oxacillin, were able to express a homogeneous high level of resistance (HoR). Moreover, we showe...

Recent work has suggested that beta-lactam antibiotics might directly affect eukaryotic cellular functions. Here, we studied the effects of commonly used beta-lactam antibiotics on rodent and human T cells in vitro and in vivo on T-cell-mediated experimental autoimmune diseases. We now report that experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis and adjuvant arthritis were significantly more severe in...

The aim of this study was to compare more conclusively the efficacy and safety of moxifloxacin, a new respiratory fluoroquinolone antibiotic, with beta-lactam-based standard therapy, which has been reported to possess good efficacy for community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). A meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) identified in PubMed, the Cochrane Library and Embase was performed. S...

Transposon mutagenesis was used to identify novel determinants of intrinsic β-lactam resistance in Acinetobacter baumannii An EZ-Tn5 transposon insertion in a gene corresponding to the A1S_0225 sequence resulted in a 4-fold decrease in resistance to ampicillin, cefotaxime, imipenem, and ceftriaxone but did not alter resistance to other classes of antibiotics. Based on this phenotype, the gene w...

The high prevalence of methicillin resistance among Staphylococcus aureus bacteremias leads to common use of vancomycin as empirical therapy. However, investigators have reported poor outcomes with vancomycin treatment for methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia. We review the evidence supporting empirical combination of both vancomycin and a β-lactam agent for Staphylococcus a...

BACKGROUND Antibiotic treatment of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) in children remains mostly empirical because clinical and paraclinical findings poorly discriminate the principal causes of CAP. Fast response to beta-lactam treatment can be considered a proxy of pneumococcal aetiology. We aimed to identify the best biological predictor of response to beta-lactam therapy in children hospital...

BACKGROUND Unconfirmed beta-lactam allergy is a significant public health problem because of the limitations it imposes in drug selection. In this study, we aimed to evaluate patients referred for beta-lactam allergy to determine the frequency of confirmed beta-lactam allergy and identify some risk factors. METHODS In a prospective cohort study, all referred patients to Immunology, Asthma and...