Susceptibility of pneumococci and Haemophilus influenzae to antibacterial agents

Strains of Diplococcus pneumoniae and Haemophilus influenzae were tested for susceptibility to numerous antibiotics by a twofold agar dilution method using an inocula replicator. Undiluted, fully grown broth cultures were used as inocula for both species, and cultures of pneumococci diluted 1:1,000 were also tested. The antibiotics included most of those in common use in the United States as well as some chemical modifications recently approved and others that are under investigation. The most striking aspect of the results was the marked susceptibility of the pneumococci to all the antibiotics tested except the polymyxins and most of the aminoglycoside antibiotics, although some new aminoglycosides were active in quite low concentrations. Some of the strains of pneumococci were of decreased susceptibility to penicillin G (minimal inhibitory concentrations, 0.2 to 0.4 mug/ml), but none were tetracycline resistant, although such strains had been reported previously from this laboratory. The strains of H. influenzae, which were all serologically nontypable, exhibited different patterns of susceptibility to the groups of antibiotics and to the individual chemically related ones. None of these strains (isolated early in 1972) were ampicillin resistant. The most active agents against H. influenzae were: carbenicillin and ampicillin, analogues related to each of them, rifampin, chloramphenicol, and the polymyxins. However, the tetracycline analogues other than tetracycline, some aminoglycosides, notably tobramycin, kanamycin, gentamicin, and verdamicin, erythromycin, and some new lincomycin analogues were also active in low concentrations. Trimethoprim alone was highly active, and in combination with sulfamethoxazole it was even more active and synergistic against strains of both D. pneumoniae and H. influenzae.