On today's episode of the real-life pharmacology podcast, I'm going to cover a couple of really, really common antibiotics.

And I'm going to cover penicillin type antibiotics.

And specifically, I'm going to cover amoxicillin and also the combination of amoxicillin and clavulaneate.

So moxacosillin sometimes referred to as a moxylum, a moxicillin in clavillanate combination

referred to as brand name augmentin.

And the mechanism of action of all penicillin type antibiotics is that they ultimately inhibit bacterial

cell wall formation. So as the bacteria is growing, producing its components and promoting growth,

what the drug does is inhibit the production of the cell wall, which is obviously required

for the bacteria to continue to grow and flourish.

Now it binds in the penicillin binding protein area or site of the cell wall.

It's a very specific name there. So that was obviously made up by

scientists that found out where they bind in there and that name came about from that reason. So

pretty easy to remember where that drug actually binds within the cell wall

and as part of that cell wall formation. Now I did mention one other drug and that's clavulaneate.

So the only way this drug is available is in combination with amoxicillin. And again, that's in

augmentin. This drug actually inhibits bacteria from

becoming resistant or helps reduce the chance that there's resistance to amoxicillin alone.

And so bacteria, they produce these enzymes called beta lactamases.

And these beta lactamases can serve a function to break down drugs that we're trying to use to kill them.

So the bacteria can break down a drug like amoxicillin and be resistant to it.

The clavulaneate inhibits that beta-actamase enzyme, and so that allows for a moxacillin to be more

prevalent and do its thing in destroying those bacteria. So it really kind of broadens or extends

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