Contribution of animal models of infection for the evaluation of the activity of antimicrobial agents.
Animal models of infection should be considered as tools that may be used for many different purposes: investigation of the physiopathology and natural history of infection on one hand, evaluation of the toxicity, pharmacokinetics and activity of antimicrobials on the other hand. Many review articles on the use of animal models of infection for the evaluation of antimicrobial agents have been published (Zak O, O'Reilly T. Animal models in the evaluation of antimicrobial agents. Minireview. Antimicrob Agents Chemother 1991;35:1527-1531), including a recent comprehensive review (O'Reilly T, Cleeland R, Squires E. Evaluation of antimicrobial s in experimental animal infections. In: Lorian V, editor. Antibiotics in Laboratory Medicine, 4th ed. Williams and Wilkins, Baltimore, 1996: 599-759). Therefore, this article will only focus on the contribution of the animal models of infection in: (i) the evaluation of the in vivo activity of antimicrobial agents, using a pharmacodynamic approach. For this purpose, animal models are used to quantify the in vivo bacterial killing and to investigate the different factors influencing the final in vivo activity. (ii) The investigation of the non response to antimicrobial agents in vivo. In this case, animal models are used to investigate the factors limiting the in vivo activity of antimicrobial agents.
Belmatoug
N
N
INSERM Unite 13, Paris, France.
Fantin
B
B