Thomas M. Gocke

Terramycin therapy of pneumonia: clinical and bacteriologic studies in 91 cases.

Excerpt The wide variety of bacterial and other microbial agents which may be implicated in the causation of acute pulmonary infections makes such infections particularly suitable for treatment wit...

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 ...

Development of chloramphenicol-resistant and chloramphenicol-dependent variants of a strain of Klebsiella pneumoniae.

Summary and conclusions The resistance of a strain of Klebsiella pneumoniae to chloramphenicol was enhanced 128-fold by serial subculture on the surface of agar plates containing graded concentrations of this antibiotic. A chloramphenicol-dependent variant also emerged during the course of these subcultures. This variant grew best in the presence of a critical concentration of chloramphenicol; as the concentration of antibiotic was either increased progressively beyond this critical level or decreased below it there was a steady decline in growth until complete inhibition of growth occurred. The chloramphenicol-dependent variant was first recognized soon after the resistance of the strain had been enhanced to a point where it was completely inhibited by this critical concentration. Evidence was also obtained of possible “back-mutation” to variants which were as sensitive as the parent strain.