The FDA recently approved Tygacil for the intravenous treatment of complicated skin and skin structure infections, including infected burns, deep soft tissue infections, infected ulcers, and complicated intraabdominal infections. Tygacil is the first approved glycylcycline antibiotic, a novel class of antimicrobials designed to overcome bacterial resistance mechanisms that have rendered many antibiotics ineffective treatments for certain infectious diseases. The FDA approval of Tygacil was based on 4 phase III studies which demonstrated monotherapy with Tygacil to be as effective as treatment with vancomycin and aztreonam for complicated skin infections and impienem cilastatin for complicated intraabdominal infections. In vitro studies also confirmed that Tygacil had antimicrobial effects against a broad spectrum of organisms including aerobic gram positive, aerobic gram negative, and anaerobic bacteria. Notably, Tygacil is also approved for the treatment of infections secondary to MRSA.
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