Learn about the Present and Future Existence of Antibacterial Drugs

As per the current analysis for antibacterial drugs, next five years are going to witness further increase in the revenues generated by the antibacterial manufacturing industry. Let’s discuss the existence of antibacterial drugs in the market through the following sections.

Synthetic or man-made antibacterial drugs were first discovered in 1930s and became highly popular the following decade. Sulfonamides were the first drugs discovered in this category and Prontosil was the first commercially developed antibacterial antibiotic. Since then, there has been an exponential growth in the field of antibacterial manufacturing.

What Are Antibacterial Drugs and Their Classes?
Antibacterial drugs are the antibiotics derived from bacteria and they help in killing or prohibiting the growth of infection causing bacteria. There are two ways of classifying these drugs:

• Bactericides and bacteriostatic: Drugs that kill bacteria are called bactericides while those limiting the growth of bacteria are called bacteriostatic. Bactericides attack the cell wall or membrane of bacterium to kill it. On the other hand bacteriostatic interfere with protein synthesis, DNA replication and other metabolic activities of bacterium to prevent it form growing.
• Narrow-spectrum and broad-spectrum: Narrow spectrum drugs target specific types of bacteria, including gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. On the other hand broad-spectrum drugs have effect on a wider range of bacteria.

Popular Antibacterial Drugs in the Market
The antibacterial drug manufacturers have come up with a number of antibacterial drugs classes in the market, the most popular of them being Cephalosporins, Fluoroquinolones, Penicillins, Carbapenems, Macrolides and Tetracyclines.

Antibacterial Drugs Applications
The most common applications of antibacterial drugs are in the following fields:

• Treatment of various infections caused by different types of bacteria in the humans.
• Treatment of bacterial infections in farm animals and poultry animals.
• Production of home cleaning products.
• Hand sanitizers, foams, soaps and other products used for maintaining hygiene and preventing bacterial attacks.

Antibacterial Market Analysis
According to the reports from the antibiotic industry, revenue worth $79 billion was generated through antibiotics in the year 2009, out of which the antibacterial drugs had a share of $37 billion. Considering the trend, it is believed that the antibacterial drug market will exceed $46 billion by the year 2015.

Some of the factors that are going to contribute in the market rise include:

• Increase in the population of elderly as this segment hugely relies on antibiotics.
• Increase in the number of infections caused by different bacteria. And the rate of increase in infections is a common issue for both the developed and the developing nations.
• Increase in the procedures like organ transplantation.
• Growing popularity of Glycopeptides and Carbapenems and other classes of antibacterial drugs.

Asia-Pacific dominates the global antibiotic and antibacterial drug market and it is expected to be the fastest growing market in the next five years as well. An increase in the number of antibacterial drug wholesalers and retailers is also expected for the USA and for the European nations.

A challenge for the industry is to fight the growing resistance in bacteria against antibacterial drugs. The research and development wings of various drug manufacturing companies are constantly working in this direction.