Bactericidal effects of antibiotics on slowly growing and nongrowing bacteria
Open accessAbstract
Antimicrobial agents are most often tested against bacteria in the log phase of multiplication to produce the maximum bactericidal effect. In an infection, bacteria may multiply less optimally. We examined the effects of several classes of antimicrobial agents to determine their actions on gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria during nongrowing and slowly growing phases. Only ciprofloxacin and ofloxacin exhibited bactericidal activity against nongrowing gram-negative bacteria, and no antibiotics were bactericidal (3-order-of-magnitude killing) against Staphylococcus aureus. For the very slowly growing gram-negative bacteria studied, gentamicin (an aminoglycoside), imipenem (a carbapenem), meropenem (a carbapenem), ciprofloxacin (a fluoroquinolone), and ofloxacin (a fluoroquinolone) exhibited up to 5.7 orders of magnitude more killing than piperacillin or cefotaxime. This is in contrast to optimally growing bacteria, in which a wide variety of antibiotic classes produced 99.9% killing. For the gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria we examined, antibiotic killing was greatly dependent on the growth rate. The clinical implications of slow killing by chemotherapeutic agents for established bacterial infections and infections involving foreign bodies are unknown.
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- Authors
- Eng, R. H., Padberg, F. T., Smith, S. M., Tan, E. N., & Cherubin, C. E.
- Affiliations
- East Orange VA Medical Center (US)
- Venue
- Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy
- Publisher
- American Society for Microbiology
- Published
- 1991-09
- Volume
- 35
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 1824-1828
- ISSN
- 0066-4804 (ISSN-L)
- 1098-6596
- PMC
- PMC245275
- OpenAlex
- W2032893012
- Cited by
- 350
- References
- 15
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 19 · 2022: 26 · 2021: 25 · 2020: 17 · 2019: 29 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 12 · 2016: 14 · 2015: 10 · 2014: 17 · 2013: 12 · 2012: 12
- FWCI
- 6.29
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- europepmc.org
- Locations
- Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Rutgers University Community Repository (Rutgers University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Pharmacology › Antibiotics Pharmacokinetics and Efficacy
- Physical Sciences › Chemistry › Organic Chemistry › Antimicrobial agents and applications
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Medicine › Antibiotic Resistance in Bacteria
- Keywords
- bactericidal activity, bacterial growth rate, ciprofloxacin, ofloxacin, gentamicin, imipenem, meropenem, carbapenems, fluoroquinolones, aminoglycosides, piperacillin, cefotaxime, Staphylococcus aureus, Gram-negative bacteria, Gram-positive bacteria, foreign body infection
- MeSH terms
- Aminoglycosides, Anti-Infective Agents, Anti-Bacterial Agents, Gram-Negative Bacteria, Gram-Positive Bacteria, Microbial Sensitivity Tests, Carbapenems, 4-Quinolones
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