Antibiotics Revisited: Problems and Prospects after Two Decades

Primaquine revisited six decades after its discovery.

Primaquine was firstly synthesized in 1946 in the USA, and is the most representative member of the anti-malarial 8-aminoquinolines. Six decades have passed and primaquine is still the only transmission-blocking anti-malarial clinically available, displaying a marked activity against gametocytes of all species of human malaria, including multi-resistant Plasmodium falciparum strains. Primaquine...

Two selection problems revisited

Aminoglycoside antibiotics--two decades of their HPLC bioanalysis.

Several reviews have been published on high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) methods for the determination of aminoglycoside antibiotics (aminoglycosides) in biological fluids [e.g. Nilsson-Ehle, I. (1983). J. Liq. Chromat. 6: 251]. Of these, the paper by Maitra et al. [(1979a). Clin. Chem. 25: 1361.] briefly summarizes the early 2-3 years of experience on HPLC assaying of amikacin, ge...

The genetic code revisited--four decades after Francis Crick.

The ancient essential process of ribosomal protein synthesis requires twenty sets of aminoacyl-tRNAs (aa-tRNAs), one for each canonical amino acid. Since Crick proposed his adaptor hypothesis (1) it was commonly accepted that all organisms possess twenty aaRSs, each enzyme specific for attaching one amino acid to tRNA. It is now clear that aa-tRNA formation is more varied, as the biosynthetic r...

Improved mortality after STEMI over two decades

Results A total of 335 patients in 1986, 351 in 1996 and 178 patients in 2006 comprise the total study population of 864 STEMI patients. In addition 25 (6,9%) patients died within the first 24 hours of hospital admission in 1986, 33(15,6%) in 1996 and 5 (2,7%) in 2006. One-year mortality decreased from 26.3% in 1986 and 19.7% in 1996 to 12.9% in 2006 (p = 0.001). Cox proportional hazard analysi...