Tigecycline is an antibiotic of the glycylcycline group that works in order to stop the growth of bacteria, responsible for causing infections. Your health specialist has prescribed tigecycline antibacterial medicine because you or your child at least 8 years old has one of the following types of serious infections:
● Complicated infection of the skin and soft tissues (the tissue below the skin), excluding diabetic foot infections.
● Complicated infection in the abdomen
Tigecycline is only used when your health specialist thinks other antibiotics are not suitable.
Warnings:
● Antibiotics of glycylcycline group are structurally identical to tetracycline class antibiotics. Therefore, Tigecycline should be used with extra caution in patients with known hypersensitivity to tetracycline class antibiotics.
● Tigecycline may be responsible for causing fetal harm when administered to a pregnant woman. In case any respective patient becomes pregnant while on tigecycline, the patient needs to be apprised of the potential hazard to the fetus.
● The use of Tigecycline during tooth development (last half of pregnancy, infancy, and childhood to the age of 8 years) may be responsible for causing permanent discoloration of the teeth (yellow-gray-brown). Tigecycline should not be used during tooth development unless other medicines are not likely to be useful or are contraindicated.
● Pseudomembranous colitis has been noted with all antibacterial agents and can range from mild to life-threatening. Thus, it is necessary to pick this diagnosis in recipients who exist with diarrhea subsequent to the use of any antibacterial agent.
● Treatment with antibacterial agents is known to alter the flora of the colon and may permit overgrowth of the clostridia. Findings suggest that a toxin produced by Clostridium difficile is the major cause of antibiotic-associated colitis. Following the diagnosis of pseudomembranous colitis has occurred, therapeutic measures need to be initiated. The mild cases of pseudomembranous colitis usually respond to drug discontinuation alone. In moderate to severe cases, consideration should be given to management with fluids and electrolytes, protein supplementation, and treatment with an antibacterial drug clinically effective against C. difficile colitis.
Precautions:
● Cautions should be exercised when considering Tigecycline monotherapy in patients with the complicated intra-abdominal infections (cIAI) secondary to clinically apparent intestinal perforation.
● Glycylcycline class antibiotics are structurally identical to tetracycline class antibiotics and may have similar side effects. Such effects may include: pseudotumor cerebri, photosensitivity, and anti-anabolic action (which has led to increased BUN, acidosis, azotemia, and hyperphosphatemia). As with tetracyclines, pancreatitis has been observed with the use of tigecycline.
● As with other existing antibiotic preparations, use of this medicinal product may cause overgrowth of non-susceptible organisms, including fungi. Patients need to be carefully monitored while on therapy. In case superinfection occurs, apt measures should be taken.
● Prescribing Tigecycline in the absence of a proven or strongly suspected bacterial infection or a prophylactic indication is unlikely to offer benefit to the patient and increases the risk of the development of drug-resistant bacteria.