A case to stop the use of the term 'antibiotics'

Diuretics: a contemporary pharmacological classification?

Diuretics are drugs that increase the flow of urine. They are commonly used to treat edema, hypertension, and heart failure. Typically, the pharmacological group consists of five classes: thiazide diuretics, loop diuretics, potassium-sparing diuretics, osmotic diuretics, and carbonic anhydrase inhibitors. This traditional classification and the nomenclature of diuretics have not changed over the last decades, which means that it was not adapted to current pharmacological research. Modern approaches in the field of pharmacological nomenclature suggest the introduction of mechanism-based drug class designations, which is not yet reflected in the group of diuretics. Moreover, included drug classes have lost their relevance as diuretic agents. Carbonic anhydrase inhibitors, for example, are mainly used in the treatment of glaucoma. Newer agents such as vasopressin-2 receptor antagonists or SGLT2 inhibitors possess diuretic properties but are not included in the pharmacological group. This review discusses the currentness of the pharmacological classification of diuretics. We elaborate changes in the field of nomenclature, the contemporary medical use of classical diuretics, and new diuretic agents.

Problems associated with the use of the term "antibiotics"

The term “antibiotics” is a broadly used misnomer to designate antibacterial drugs. In a recent article, we have proposed to replace, e.g., the term “antibiotics” by “antibacterial drugs”, “antibiosis” by “antibacterial therapy”, “antibiogram” by “antibacteriogram”, and “antibiotic stewardship” by “antibacterial stewardship” (Seifert and Schirmer Trends Microbiol, 2021). In the present article, we show that many traditional terms related to antibiotics are used much more widely in the biomedical literature than the respective scientifically precise terms. This practice should be stopped. Moreover, we provide arguments to end the use of other broadly used terms in the biomedical literature such as “narrow-spectrum antibiotics” and “reserve antibiotics”, “chemotherapeutics”, and “tuberculostatics”. Finally, we provide several examples showing that antibacterial drugs are used for non-antibacterial indications and that some non-antibacterial drugs are used for antibacterial indications now. Thus, the increasing importance of drug repurposing renders it important to drop short designations of drug classes such as “antibiotics”. Rather, the term “drug” should be explicitly used, facilitating the inclusion of newly emerging indications such as antipsychotic and anti-inflammatory. This article is part of an effort to implement a new rational nomenclature of drug classes across the entire field of pharmacology.