However, bugs like strep and staph are growing resistant to them, as well as to the primary backup medicines, known as quinolones. The drug industry's latest salvo are the ketolides. They are derived from macrolides, but they are chemically different, so they will kill bacteria that are resistant to macrolides. Reports on two varieties of ketolides were presented in Toronto on Wednesday at an infestious diseases meeting. Macrolides work by gumming up bacteria's ability to make new proteins.
Some bacteria elude the medicines by quickly pumping it out before it does any harm.
Because the ketolides are chemically different, the resistant bacteria do not spit them out this way. Jerome J. Schentag, a pharmaceutics professor at the State University of New York in Buffalo, noted that quinolone resistance is a growing worry. All rights reserved.