Clinical experimentation with aerosol antibiotics: current and future methods of administration

Paul Zarogoulidis,^1,2 Ioannis Kioumis,¹ Konstantinos Porpodis,¹ Dionysios Spyratos,¹ Kosmas Tsakiridis,³ Haidong Huang,⁴ Qiang Li,⁴ J Francis Turner,⁵ Robert Browning,⁶ Wolfgang Hohenforst-Schmidt,⁷ Konstantinos Zarogoulidis<sup>1

1</sup>Pulmonary Department, G Papanikolaou General Hospital, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece; ²Department of Interventional Pneumology, Ruhrlandklinik, West German Lung Center, University Hospital, University Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany; ³Cardiothoracic Surgery Department, Saint Luke Private Hospital of Health Excellence, Thessaloniki, Greece; ⁴Department of Respiratory Diseases, Shanghai Hospital/First Affiliated Hospital of the Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China; ⁵Pulmonary Medicine, University of Nevada School of Medicine, National Supercomputing Center for Energy and the Environment University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV, USA; ⁶Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Interventional Pulmonology, National Naval Medical Center, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Bethesda, MD, USA; ⁷II Medical Department, Regional Clinic of Coburg, University of Wuerzburg, Coburg, Germany

Abstract: Currently almost all antibiotics are administered by the intravenous route. Since several systems and situations require more efficient methods of administration, investigation and experimentation in drug design has produced local treatment modalities. Administration of antibiotics in aerosol form is one of the treatment methods of increasing interest. As the field of drug nanotechnology grows, new molecules have been produced and combined with aerosol production systems. In the current review, we discuss the efficiency of aerosol antibiotic studies along with aerosol production systems. The different parts of the aerosol antibiotic methodology are presented. Additionally, information regarding the drug molecules used is presented and future applications of this method are discussed.

Keywords: antibiotics, aerosol, nebulizers

Corrigendum for this paper has been published.