[Laboratory and clinical studies on cefmenoxime in respiratory tract infections]

Cefmenoxime (CMX, Bestcall) was administered by drip infusion to 65 patients with various respiratory infections and its effect was evaluated. The rate of effectiveness was 86.2% in all cases including 40 cases of acute pneumonia and 12 cases of chronic bronchitis. CMX was examined comparatively with other drugs for antibacterial activity on clinically isolated strains of 2 bacterial species, i.e. H. influenzae and B. catarrhalis, each of which has a high frequency of clinical isolation from infected respiratory organs. On H. influenzae CMX exerted the strongest antibacterial activity among test drugs (ampicillin, piperacillin cefoperazone, latamoxef) regardless of the production of beta-lactamase by the organism, while on B. catarrhalis it also exerted an antibacterial activity strong enough to control the proliferation of all strains at a dose level of 0.39 microgram/ml. Drip infusion of this drug (2 gram) brought about an average maximum blood concentration of 127.2 +/- 21.5 micrograms/ml and an average half-life in blood of 1.10 +/- 0.28 hours. However, different values were obtained for different individual cases because these subjects were patients of chronic respiratory infections each having some underlying disease or other. Side effects of the drug were observed as allergic symptoms such as pyrexia, eruption and the like, but only 5 cases without any serious cases. Increases in transaminase suggestive of abnormal clinical test results were also observed in 5 cases. However, numerical recoveries to the normal values were obtained in all of these 5 cases with the withdrawal of the drug.