Furazolidone
group of stereoisomers
Furazolidone is a nitrofuran antibacterial agent and monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI). It is marketed by Roberts Laboratories under the brand name Furoxone and by GlaxoSmithKline as Dependal-M.
Medical uses
Furazolidone has been used in human and veterinary medicine. It has a broad spectrum of activity, being active against:
Gram-positive bacteria
Clostridium perfringens
Corynebacterium pyogenes
Streptococci
Staphylococci
Gram-negative bacteria
Escherichia coli
Salmonella dublin
Salmonella typhimurium
Shigella
Protozoa
Giardia lamblia
Eimeria species
Histomonas meleagridis
Use in humans
In humans, it has been used to treat diarrhoea and enteritis caused by bacterial or protozoan infections, including traveler's diarrhoea, cholera, and bacteremic salmonellosis.
In 2002, a journal article suggested its use in treatment of H. pylori infections in children.
Furazolidone has also been used for giardiasis (due to Giardia lamblia), amoebiasis, and shigellosis, although it is not a first-line treatment.
From the early 1970s, it has been used in China to treat peptic ulcers, where the mechanism is treatment of the causative Helicobacter pylori infection.
Use in animals
As a veterinary medicine, furazolidone has been used with some success to treat salmonids for Myxobolus cerebralis infections.
It has also been used in aquaculture.
Since furazolidone is a nitrofuran antibiotic, its use in food animals is currently prohibited by the FDA under the Animal Medicinal Drug Use Clarification Act, 1994.
Furazolidone is no longer available in the US.
Use in laboratory
It is used to differentiate micrococci and staphylococci.
The public source identifies “Furazolidone” as group of stereoisomers. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Furazolidone, group and stereoisomers.
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This entry incorporates text from “Furazolidone” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.