ANTIMICROBIAL ACTIVITY OF NEW ANTIBIOTICS AGAINST BACTERIAL ISOLATES FROM A COMMUNITY-HOSPITAL

In this study, the antimicrobial activity of several new antibiotics w as evaluated using microdilution antimicrobial susceptibility testing against 220 clinically significant isolates obtained from a community hospital. The following antibiotics were studied: loracarbef, cefixime , cefpirome, desacetylcefotaxime, cefpodoxime, cefmetazole, cefepime, cefprozil and fleroxacin. The synergy of two particular drug combinati ons was evaluated using cefpirome/desacetylcefotaxime and cefpodoxime/ desacetylcefotaxime. Cefpirome was clearly the most active antibiotic: 88% of the isolates tested were found to be susceptible. Specifically , this included 89% of enterococci, 84% of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and 33% of Pseudomonas cepacia. All of the antibiotics tested demonstrate d excellent activity against isolates of Escherichia coli and Klebsiel la, Proteus and Salmonella species. For the other antimicrobials, 57, 50, 64, 65, 76, 74, and 64% of the isolates were sensitive to loracarb ef, cefixime, cefmetazole, cefprozil, fleroxacin, desacetylcefotaxime, and cefpodoxime, respectively. Among the gram-positive species, 88 an d 92.5% of the isolates were sensitive to cefprozil and cefpirome, res pectively. Cefepime and fleroxacin demonstrated the highest gram-negat ive activity with 85 and 89%, respectively, of the isolates being sens itive. The results of this study highlighted cefepime and cefpirome, w hich showed high overall in vitro activity against 79 and 88%, respect ively, of the isolates tested.