A new method of assessing the bactericidal activity of quinolones and other antibacterial agents, known as the bactericidal index or BI, is introduced and discussed. The BI represents total bacterial kill over a drug concentration range limited to levels achievable in vivo. This method allows the bactericidal activity of drugs to be readily compared. Calculation of BI produces a single value pe...

Within the past decade several new fluoroquinolones (norfloxacin, enoxacin, ofloxacin, ciprofloxacin, pefloxacin, temafloxacin and lomefloxacin) have been introduced into therapy. All these agents share a broad spectrum of activity against a variety of pathogens which are covered with low concentrations of the compounds mentioned. Moreover, the quinolones share the advantage that they are so fa...

Multivariate calibration methods (partial least squares calibration, back propagation multilayer perceptrons networks, radial basis functions and generalized regression neural networks) were applied to the simultaneous fluorometric quantification of levofloxacin, garenoxacin and grepafloxacin, without previous separation steps. A data matrix was obtained by registering the emission spectra of m...

The in vitro activities of three new quinolones (sparfloxacin, CI-960, and PD 131,628) were compared with that of ciprofloxacin against 5,252 routine clinical aerobic and facultatively anaerobic bacterial isolates. Overall, CI-960 was the most active drug in vitro (MIC for 90% of the strains tested, 0.13 micrograms/ml); ciprofloxacin and sparfloxacin were the least active (MIC for 90% of the st...

Since the introduction of the floroquinolones for clinical use in the late 1980s, they have been used successfully for a large number of clinical situations. The quinolones inhibit bacterial DNA replication by inhibiting DNA gyrase and topoisomerase IV. Careful clinical studies are needed to establish the efficacy of once daily use of fluoroquinolones, to determine that clinical efficacy is equ...