Hey, all, Eric Christensen here, pharmacist from real-life pharmacology.com.

On today's podcast, I'm going to cover quinelone antibiotics.

So let's start with a few common examples of these drugs.

Levafloxacin, brand name Levaquin, Cyprofloxacin, brand name Cypro, and moxifloxacin, brand name Levequin, Cyprofloxacin, brand name Cypro, and Moxifloxicin, brand name Avalox.

The mechanism of action and how these drugs work is they ultimately inhibit bacterial DNA synthesis, as well as the production of proteins.

And they do this by inhibiting an enzyme called DNA gyrase,

which this enzyme actually helps uncoil DNA,

so it can be readily accessible to be converted into DNA and proteins and other things as well.

So from that, by that mechanism, ultimately it prevents bacterial reproduction synthesis and things like that. So again, inhibition of DNA gyrase is the primary mechanism

of action. Now, what are these drugs used for? These drugs are generally reserved for severe infections,

gram-negative infections, sometimes pseudomonas can have good

coverage for that. So a urinary tract infection, for example, significant pneumonia is another example

there. And there has been, over the last few years, a lot of press about these drugs.

And FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, has come out with a bunch of warnings.

And due to this, I have definitely seen use of quinolones go down over time a little bit,

but they are key drugs in the setting of significant

infections. So the reason for those warnings, there's concerns with mental health issues,

possibility of low blood sugars, tendon rupture is always kind of a classic test question that I've seen come up.

Also rare cases of neuropathy in different muscle abnormalities.

So because of those warnings, the quinolones definitely seem to be being used less than maybe they were,

you know, 10 years ago or so. So keep that in mind with the side effect profile of these

antibiotics. A couple others I wanted to mention in addition to those warnings, GI side effects,

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