Institute of Pharmacology, Hannover Medical School, Carl-Neuberg-Str. 1, 30625, Hannover, Germany.
Naunyn Schmiedebergs Arch Pharmacol. 2021 Nov;394(11):2153-2166. doi: 10.1007/s00210-021-02144-9. Epub 2021 Sep 18.
The term "antibiotics" is a broadly used misnomer to designate antibacterial drugs. In a recent article, we have proposed to replace, e.g., the term "antibiotics" by "antibacterial drugs", "antibiosis" by "antibacterial therapy", "antibiogram" by "antibacteriogram", and "antibiotic stewardship" by "antibacterial stewardship" (Seifert and Schirmer Trends Microbiol, 2021). In the present article, we show that many traditional terms related to antibiotics are used much more widely in the biomedical literature than the respective scientifically precise terms. This practice should be stopped. Moreover, we provide arguments to end the use of other broadly used terms in the biomedical literature such as "narrow-spectrum antibiotics" and "reserve antibiotics", "chemotherapeutics", and "tuberculostatics". Finally, we provide several examples showing that antibacterial drugs are used for non-antibacterial indications and that some non-antibacterial drugs are used for antibacterial indications now. Thus, the increasing importance of drug repurposing renders it important to drop short designations of drug classes such as "antibiotics". Rather, the term "drug" should be explicitly used, facilitating the inclusion of newly emerging indications such as antipsychotic and anti-inflammatory. This article is part of an effort to implement a new rational nomenclature of drug classes across the entire field of pharmacology.
术语“抗生素”是一个广泛使用的错误术语，用于指代抗菌药物。在最近的一篇文章中，我们建议用“抗菌药物”来替代“抗生素”，用“抗菌疗法”来替代“抗生作用”，用“抗菌谱”来替代“抗菌图”，用“抗菌药物管理”来替代“抗菌药物管理”(Seifert 和 Schirmer Trends Microbiol, 2021)。在本文中，我们表明，许多与抗生素相关的传统术语在生物医学文献中的使用范围比各自的科学术语要广泛得多。这种做法应该停止。此外，我们还提供了一些论据，以结束在生物医学文献中使用其他广泛使用的术语，如“窄谱抗生素”和“储备抗生素”、“化疗药物”和“抗结核药物”。最后，我们提供了一些例子，表明抗菌药物被用于非抗菌适应症，而一些非抗菌药物现在被用于抗菌适应症。因此，药物再利用的重要性不断增加，使得放弃药物类别（如“抗生素”）的简短名称变得尤为重要。相反，应该明确使用“药物”一词，从而便于纳入新出现的适应症，如抗精神病和抗炎。本文是在整个药理学领域实施新的药物类别合理命名法的努力的一部分。
