Arbekacin - A Novel Antibiotic for Critical Infections

Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest menace to global health. Deaths from Drug-resistant infections is set to escalate exponentially. Pipeline for new antibacterials is almost empty. The World Health Organization has reinforced its warning that to tackle growing threat of antimicrobial resistance, development of a new antibiotics is seriously lacking. Arbekacin is a novel aminoglycoside primarily used in the treatment of infections caused by resistant Staphylococcus Aureus i.e. Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA). Besides MRSA it also demonstrates activity against Enterococci and several Gram negative pathogens such as Klebsiella pneumonia, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Acinetobacter baumannii including resistant strain. Arbekacin which has been used in Japan and Korea since more than two and half decades has been recently approved in India. This review will examine how Arbekacin evades the common mechanisms of antibiotic resistance, the pharmacokinetics of Arbekacin, and the various pharmacological properties and its spectrum of in vitro activity. The results of clinical trials on Arbekacin are also described, as is the patient safety and tolerability observed during these studies.