Effects of erythromycin and its derivatives on interleukin-8 release by human bronchial epithelial cell line BEAS-2B cells

Macrolide antibiotics are widely used as antimicrobial agents. Previously, we discovered that erythromycin (EM) and its derivatives with no antimicrobial activity have strong gastrointestinal motor-stimulating (GMS) activity. We proposed the generic name 'motilide' for a series of macrolides with motilin-agonistic activity. About the same time, some macrolide antibiotics, especially EM-A and clarithromycin (CAM) have been reported to be effective against diffuse panbronchiolitis (DPB) which is one of chronic airway inflammatory diseases. We report here the suppressive effect of IL-8 release, the antimicrobial activity and GMS activity of EM-A, CAM and EM derivatives and describe the structure-activity relationships.