Harvey Shields Collins

AUREOMYCIN—A NEW ANTIBIOTIC: EVALUATION OF ITS EFFECTS IN TYPHOID FEVER, SEVERE SALMONELLA INFECTIONS AND IN A CASE OF COLON BACILLUS BACTEREMIA

Excerpt There has been a notable lack of success in the treatment of typhoid fever and salmonella infections with the chemotherapeutic and antibiotic agents that are now available. This has been tr...

Treatment of primary atypical pneumonia with aureomycin

T HE difficulties of reaching definite conclusions concerning the therapeutic effectiveness of any agent in the so-called primary atypical (viral) pneumonias were discussed in a previous communication. l Preliminary observations presented in that paper suggested that aureomycin had a beneficial effect on the course of this disease in a small number of consecutive cases. Similar reports on favorable results in small numbers of consecutive cases had been made from two other clinics213 and a third report has since appeared from a military hospital in which one group of patients was treated with aureomycin while alternate patients, serving as controls, were treated with penicillin.4 The course of the illness under penicillin therapy was quite variable in contrast to the regular and rather prompt improvement that followed the use of aureomycin. Because of the wide spectrum of antimicrobial action of aureomycin an attempt was made throughout the past year to determine the range of effectiveness of this antibiotic in the various types of pneumonia and other severe respiratory infections which were available to us for study. The present paper deals with observations made in all of the patients who were treated during this year with aureomycin and in whom the diagnosis of primary atypical pneumonia seemed fully justified by the best available clinical and laboratory criteria. The findings in several other aureomycin-treated patients in whom this diagnosis could reasonably be considered will also be presented here and the results in other types of pneumonias will be reported in separate communications. 5*6V7

PRESENT STATUS OF AUREOMYCIN THERAPY

Excerpt Aureomycin is the most recent antibiotic to be accepted into the group of antimicrobial agents that are highly effective in the therapy of human infections. The activity of this antibiotic ...

Aureomycin in Treatment of Pneumococcal Pneumonia and Meningococcemia.

Aureomycin is a new antibiotic which is active in vitro and in experimental animals against gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria and is also effective against experimental infections with rickettsias and with viruses of the psittacosis lymphogranuloma venereum group.† The findings in 4 cases of pneumococcal pneumonia and in one case of meningo-coccemia are presented here briefly. The bac-teriologic methods are described elsewhere. 1 , 2 The cases of lobar pneumonia were of moderate severity and a single lobe was involved in each instance. All were in males ranging in age from 16 to 65 years. Pneumo-cocci were identified and typed from the sputum in each instance and from the blood in one case before oral aureomycin therapy was started. One patient received an initial dose of 0.5 g followed by 0.25 g every 6 hours for a total of 5 g; the others received 0.5 g every 6 or 8 hours for a total of 10 g in 2 cases and 20 g in the oldest patient. No other chemotherapy or antibiotic was used. Some of the relevant findings are shown in Figure 1. The patients became afebrile, and both subjective and objective improvement occurred in each instance between 18 and 36 hours after the first dose and was slowest in the oldest patients who had the severest illness and jaundice.

Urinary Excretion of Aureomycin.

Summary After a single oral dose of 0.5 or 0.75 g of aureomycin given to fasting normal subjects antibiotic activity was recovered in the urine for more than 33 to 55 hours. The antibiotic was excreted in high concentrations between 2 and 16 hours and the largest rate of excretion occurred between 2 and 8 hours. The findings suggest that the optimum intervals between oral doses of aureomycin should be about 8 hours.