The main groups of antimicrobial substances include:
Antibacterial agents
Antibiotics are a large group of antimicrobial drugs that are derived from bacteria or fungi.
All antibiotics are antimicrobials, but not all antimicrobials are antibiotics.
Antibiotics are widely used in clinical practice for multiple infections of bacterial or mycotic etiology.
The first natural antibiotic found was penicillin, first described by Alexander Fleming in 1928.
It was obtained from a type of mushroom (penicillin Rubens), and to this day is widely used for the treatment of streptococcal, pneumococcal, meningococcal infections, syphilis, Lyme disease and others.
Chemotherapeutic drugs are antibacterial agents obtained synthetically.
The widespread use of antibiotics and chemotherapeutic drugs, even for mild bacterial infections, as well as the preventive treatment of viral infections to protect against secondary bacterial invasion, has led to the development of drug resistance in many drugs.
It is predicted that the most commonly used drugs will have no effect for ten to twenty years.
Bacteria develop resistance to certain drugs by various mechanisms, and the most common of them consist in mutations of certain genes that increase their resistance.
The use of antibiotics and chemotherapeutic drugs hides the risk of developing various side effects from mild to life-threatening reactions with an allergic or immunological mechanism.
Antiviral drugs
Antiviral drugs have a narrow spectrum and a small therapeutic width (there is a small difference between the maximum therapeutic and minimum toxic dose).
The main groups of drugs are directed against several large viral families, namely retroviruses, hepatitis and herpes viruses, as well as influenza virus.
They are used in infected people, contact patients or healthy carriers, their main purpose is to kill or suppress the spread of viruses.
The most commonly used antiherpes agent in clinical practice is the drug acyclovir, which exists in various forms for topical, oral or parenteral use and is highly effective in shingles, chickenpox, herpes simplex, cytomegalovirus. tsescort.org/trans/france/paris/
