title: Bactericidal effects of antibiotics on slowly growing and nongrowing bacteria.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Infectious Disease, Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, East Orange, New Jersey 07019.
authors.forename: R H
authors.initials: RH
authors.lastname: Eng
authors.forename: F T
authors.initials: FT
authors.lastname: Padberg
authors.forename: S M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: E N
authors.initials: EN
authors.lastname: Tan
authors.forename: C E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Cherubin
mesh_terms: D042462:4-Quinolones; D000617:Aminoglycosides; D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents / Q000494:pharmacology*; D000890:Anti-Infective Agents / Q000494:pharmacology*; D015780:Carbapenems / Q000494:pharmacology*; D006090:Gram-Negative Bacteria / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000254:growth & development; D006094:Gram-Positive Bacteria / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000254:growth & development; D008826:Microbial Sensitivity Tests
chemical_list: D042462:4-Quinolones; D000617:Aminoglycosides; D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents; D000890:Anti-Infective Agents; D015780:Carbapenems