Question

describe in your own words the instability associated with erythromycin and what structural modifications have been made to mitigate this instability. You should include examples of modifications to the structure that led to new macrolide antibiotics with increased acid stability. How did the modification change other properties of the drug? This may require additional research into erythromycin derivatives such as azithromycin, clarithromycin or other macrolide antibiotics.

Answer 1

Before knowing about the instability associated with Erythromycin, it is important to keepin mind that it is anantibiotic used to treat wide variety of bacterial infection. The hydrozone bonds present in Erythromycin can become weaker at certain situations like, when introduced to acidic media. When Erythromycin is subjected to acidic media,the hydrazone bond breaks and leads to Intramolecular dehydration. Thus various studies were made to make an antibiotic which can withstand better pH scale. As most of the infection sites are acidic,it was important to improve the structure of Erythromycin to withstand the acidic media.Thus Adamantane was linked with Erythromycine which further supported and enabled the compound to workefficiently in the acidic media. Some conjugates of Erythromycin were also created for the purpose.The were Azythromycin and Clarythomycn.However they were not as efficient as the Adamantane linked Erythromycin. The modification made the drug to perform far better from its inital state.