Antimicrobial
Agents that kill or inhibit microorganisms to treat or prevent infection.
Last updated
Antimicrobials are agents that kill microorganisms or stop their growth. They are used to treat infections (antimicrobial chemotherapy) or prevent them (antimicrobial prophylaxis). The main classes include disinfectants, antiseptics, and antibiotics, with misuse driving drug-resistant pathogens.
Quick Facts
- Field
- Microbiology and Medicine
- Known for
- Killing or inhibiting microorganisms to treat and prevent infections
Facts from the source article.
Lore & Background
In the 19th century, Louis Pasteur and Jules Francois Joubert observed antagonism between bacteria, leading Joseph Lister to incorporate antiseptic methods like sterilizing surgical tools, which drastically reduced surgical infections. Pasteur's work also led to vaccines for anthrax and rabies.
Reader's Guide
Antimicrobials are foundational to modern medicine, enabling safe surgery and treatment of bacterial, fungal, viral, and parasitic infections. Misuse in humans, animals, and plants accelerates resistance. Strategies to combat this include sampling diverse environments, metagenomics, and developing small-molecule libraries. Antifungals exploit differences between mammalian and fungal cells but can have side effects.
Antivirals target specific viruses, and antiparasitics treat diseases like malaria. Broad-spectrum therapeutics are proposed for pandemics. Non-pharmaceutical antimicrobials include organic acids used in food and heavy metal cations, though some are toxic.
More in Respiratory & Infectious Diseases
Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Antimicrobial (CC BY-SA 4.0).
- Word definitions: the Codexery glossary, each quoted from its Wikipedia article.
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