Urgent Need to Antibiotic Pharmacokinetic Services for Iranian Health Care Centers

Considering the emergence of both Gram negative and Gram positive resistant bacterial strains in the recent years, makes it more prominent to utilize the existed antibiotics in an appropriate and justified way in the treatment of drug resistant infections. Many of the agents currently used to treat bacterial, viral and fungal infections do not need to be pharmacokinetically monitored; it means we do not require their serum levels in order to adjust the dose in a routine manner. Examples of these antibiotics are penicillins, cephalosporins, macrolides, tetracyclines, fluoroquinolones, etc. Of course these agents need dose adjustment based on renal and hepatic functions. On the other hand there are antibiotics which need to be monitored through their serum levels because of three main following reasons:1- To avoid overdosing patient and reduce the incidence of toxicities.2- To avoid underdosing patient, this may lead to the emergence of resistant strains and treatment failure.3- To optimize the dose of antibiotic to achieve the bactericidal or bacteriostatic effects needed to suppress the infective agent.