New antibiotics for the treatment of serious infections in intensive care unit patients

Abstract

Objective: Nowadays, the infections of patients admitted to intensive care units (ICUs) are a major public health problem; this is due to several factors, in primis an increase in antibiotic resistance and the inappropriate use of antibiotics.

Methods: We briefly focus on on both new antibiotics approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in the last decade (2010–2019), and on agents in an advanced phase of development that have been developed, or are already approved, for the treatment of serious infections due to multidrug-resistant bacteria, both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria.

Results: An adequate knowledge of the new antibiotics will reduce their inappropriate use with the consequent reduction in the onset of new resistance and decreasing health care costs.

Conclusion: Antimicrobial stewardship programs to optimize antimicrobial prescribing and to preserve the effectiveness of the new antimicrobial agents are urgently needed'.

Keywords:

• Intensive care unit infections
• critically ill patients
• multidrug-resistant organisms
• antibacterial agents

Transparency

Declaration of funding

This paper was not funded.

Author contributions: All authors contributed equally to this manuscript.

Declaration of financial/other relationships

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. CMRO peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Acknowledgments

The authors are deeply grateful to Mr. Nagoth Joseph Amruthraj, Senior Researcher – Clinical, Experimental and Medical Sciences, Chair of Nephrology, Department of Cardio-Vascular Medicine, University of Study of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Caserta, Italy 81100 – for his valuable pro bono help in revising the manuscript in order to improve and polish language.