Azalide

Azalides such as azithromycin are a class of macrolide antibiotics that were originally manufactured in response to the poor acid stability exhibited by original macrolides (erythromycin). Following the clinical overuse of macrolides and azalides, ketolides have been developed to combat surfacing macrolide-azalide resistance among streptococci species. Azalides have several advantages over erythromycin such as more potent gram negative antimicrobial activity, acid stability, and side effect tolerability. Although there are few drug interactions with azithromycin, it weakly inhibits the CYP4A4 enzyme.