I am currently reading ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ by Professor Dame Sally Davies, Dr Jonathan Grant and Professor Mike Catchpole (yes, I know I’m several years late to this particular party). I might do a book review for the blog once I’ve finished it – but an interesting question emerged in the early chapters. The author seem to make a point of referring to ‘antimicrobials’ rather than ‘antibiotics’ in the early part of the book, but later on, antibiotics appears as a common term. Which got me to thinking about what is the most appropriate generic term for what most people would term ‘antibiotics’ (what your GP gives you when you’ve got a snuffle, I mean potentially serious bacterial infection)?
I think most experts agree that ‘antibiotics’ is not a good catch-all term to encompass antibacterials, antivirals, and antifungals. The tight definition of an antibiotic is a substance produced by a micro-organism to kill or inhibit another micro-organism. Plus, antibiotics are closely associated with antibacterials, so doesn’t do a good job of capturing antifungals and antivirals.
There are lots of different ways to approach this, but a working scheme for me also needs to find a home for biocides (chemicals applied for disinfection) and antiseptics (chemicals applied to the skin). So, I’ve come to the scheme above. As you can see, I have made anti-infectives subsidiary to antimicrobials, on a par with biocides and antiseptics.
I’d be interested in hearing what others think about this! Please comment away.