Question by: Lisa
Augmentin is an antibiotic, so we use it to treat infections. Infections caused by bacteria, to be more specific.
Actually, augmentin is a commercial name. It has 2 components:
· Amoxicillin: it’s an antibiotic.
· Clavulanic acid: it makes the antibiotic more effective by decreasing resistance. We also call it clavulanate.
Amoxicillin is an old (but effective) antibiotic. It is a cousin of penicillin, the first antibiotic we discovered.
Their family of antibiotics is called ß-lactam antibiotics, and it’s wide-spectrum, which means they can kill many different types of bacteria.
Because amoxicillin has been around for so long, some bacteria have learned to defend against it. That’s called “resistance,” and it’s becoming a worldwide problem: bacteria are getting more and more used to antibiotics, so they are less effective.
Thankfully, we have clavulanate.
Clavulanate enhances the antibacterial effect of amoxicillin by blocking bacteria’s resistance mechanisms.
That makes amoxicillin effective again so we can treat a variety of bacterial infections which would otherwise be resistant to antibiotic.
The most common uses for Augmentin are:
· pneumonia
· urinary infections
· ear or throat infections
· sinusitis
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