Urinary tract infections are the second most common bacterial infections in the world. Most are easily treated with a short oral antibiotic course and resolve within days. But a growing subset — the complicated UTIs that reach the kidneys, invade the bloodstream, or are caused by multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria — represent one of the most serious challenges in hospital medicine today. These are infections that can kill. And for years, physicians treating them have been watching the available antibiotic arsenal shrink as resistance to drug after drug has rendered once-reliable treatments useless.
That arsenal just received a meaningful addition. On May 29, 2026, the FDA approved Zaynich (cefepime and zidebactam), a novel intravenous antibiotic combination developed by Wockhardt, for the treatment of adult patients with complicated urinary tract infections (cUTI) — including acute pyelonephritis (kidney infection) — caused by susceptible Gram-negative pathogens. The approved organisms include Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Proteus mirabilis, Enterobacter cloacae complex, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa — a list that encompasses the bacteria responsible for the most clinically dangerous and drug-resistant complicated UTIs in hospital settings.
