Antibiotic Combinations

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Abstract
SEVERAL recent studies reported from this laboratory have dealt with the antibacterial action of serum of normal young men after ingestion of the same total amounts of antibiotics given singly and in pairs. Some of these pairs of antibiotics had been reported by a number of workers as exhibiting synergistic action against various organisms in vitro and a few also in vivo. One such pair was the combination of novobiocin with penicillin; the available reports on studies with this combination were reviewed by Jones and Finland,1 who compared the antibacterial activity of serum of normal subjects after ingestion of 1.0 gm. of novobiocin or penicillin G or both. Four test organisms varying in susceptibility to these two antibiotics were used for the assays in that study. In each of the comparisons the dose of equal parts of novobiocin and penicillin (0.5 gm. of each) yielded antibacterial activity that was intermediate between that produced by the same total amount (1.0 gm.) of each of the antibiotics separately. There was no evidence of any synergistic action of these two antibiotics against any of the strains tested. However, there was a suggestion of some reduced activity of novobiocin by penicillin against a staphylococcus that was highly resistant to penicillin but sensitive to novobiocin.

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