[Antimicrobial effects of anesthetics and analgesics]

Drugs, not designed as antibiotics, and whose primary mode of action is modulation of active and passive ionic transport-mechanisms in the eucaryotic cell, also act on procaryotic cell-walls, and the action is antimicrobial. The drugs may be classified, non-antibiotics. Anaesthetic gases are bactericidal in the fluid state, and in the vaporous state at high concentrations. Local anaesthetics of the ester type have stronger antimicrobial actions than the amidetype, and synergy is found between local anaesthetics and antibiotics. Barbiturates show antimicrobial action at high concentrations, and there is a possible synergy with antibiotics. Synthetic analogs of morphine have stronger antimicrobial action than the natural derivatives. Aspirin (ASA) inhibits the growth of Klebsiella pneumoniae at concentrations within the range of that in plasma in normal clinical usage; but induces non-genetical resistance to antibiotics. Increasing problems of bacterial resistance to common antibiotics might render non-antibiotics subject to development into antibiotics, and to be utilized in combination treatment of resistant infectious diseases.