Antagonism between bacteriostatic and bactericidal antibiotics is prevalent.

ABSTRACT: Combination therapy is rarely used to counter the evolution of resistance in bacterial infections. Expansion of the use of combination therapy requires knowledge of how drugs interact at inhibitory concentrations. More than 50 years ago, it was noted that, if bactericidal drugs are most potent with actively dividing cells, then the inhibition of growth induced by a bacteriostatic drug should result in an overall reduction of efficacy when the drug is used in combination with a bactericidal drug. Our goal here was to investigate this hypothesis systematically. We first constructed time-kill curves using five different antibiotics at clinically relevant concentrations, and we observed antagonism between bactericidal and bacteriostatic drugs. We extended our investigation by performing a scre

SUBMITTER: Ocampo PS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4135978 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature