Pharmacy Exam Points (to remember)... Set 12

1. Venereal disease is a disease typically contracted by sexual intercourse with a person that is already infected, in short it is a sexually transmitted disease. Gonorrhoea is the commonest venereal disease.
2. Syphilis is a contagious venereal disease that progressively affects many tissues. A single treatment with penicillin is curative for primary and secondary syphilis.
3. Bacteria have cell wall while mammalian cells lack cell wall.
4. The bacterial cell wall is composed of a polymer called peptidoglycan that consists of glycan units joined to each other by peptide cross-links.
5. To be maximally effective, inhibitors of cell wall synthesis require actively proliferating microorganisms. They have little or no effect on bacteria that are not growing and dividing.
6. Penicillins are inactive against organisms that are devoid of cell wall, such as mycobacteria, protozoa, fungi, and viruses.
7. The penicillins are among the most widely effective and the least toxic drugs known, but increased resistance has limited their use.
8. The basic structure of penicillins consists of a core β-lactam ring, which is attached to a thiazolidine ring and an R- side chain.
9. The nature of R- side chain in penicillin structure affects the antimicrobial spectrum, stability to stomach acid, cross hypersensitivity and susceptibility to bacterial degradative enzymes (β-lactamases or penicillinases).
10. In the penicillin skeletal structure, the site of hydrolysis by bacterial penicillinase or by stomach acid is the β-lactam ring.