Zeitschrift für Infektionskrankheiten und Therapie

Abstrakt

Tetracyclines as Masterful Regulators of Mitochondrial Function in Viral and Infectious Disease States

Mark L. Nelson

Of all the antibiotic classes used in medicine, the Tetracycline’s (Tcs) stand out as extraordinary compounds and as bacteriostatic agents inhibiting protein synthesis in bacteria, the genesis of their success as medicinal and commercially valuable life-saving drugs. But they also possess unique anti-inflammatory activity in humans, where their activity is multifold having a long and rich history of affecting such pathways. Historically, the 1^st generation fermentation Tcs affected the growth of α-proteobacteria rickettsias, known to cause infectious diseases such as spotted fevers and typhus, where chlortetracycline 1 was so effective against rickettsial disease it was approved for clinical use in 1947 even before the chemical structure was solved in the early 1950s.