Evaluation of in vitro activity of tigecycline against gram negative bacilli

Nosocomial infections are important healthcare issues by reason of their high mortality and morbidity rate, prolonged hospital stay and high treatment costs. In recent years, the most isolated agents at nosocomial infections, especially in intensive care units, are gram negative bacilli.At the present day, gradually increasing resistance to antimicrobial agents utilised for infections related to gram negative bacilli have become an important healthcare problem in our country, as in the whole world. This situation requires to develop new antimicrobial agents.Tigecycline is one of the last recent developed antimicrobial agents. It is the first member of glycilcycline group of drugs. Tigecycline binds to 30S subunit of the bacterial ribosome and through blocking to reach rRNA to its target, it inhibits protein synhesis.In this study, that planned to search sensitivity of tigecycline 100 Gram negative bacilli, 25 of them Escherichia coli, 25 of them Klebsiella spp, 25 of them Acinetobacter baumanii, 25 of them Pseudomonas aeruginosa that isolated from differant clinical specimens in Fırat University Microbiology Laboratory. While antimicrobial susceptibility of these strains were determined with disc diffusion method, tigecycline susceptibility was tested by broth microdilution method.100% of 25 Escherichia coli, 100% of 25 Klebsiella spp., 96% of Acinetobacter baumannii strains tested were detected susceptible to tigecycline while 100% of 25 Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains were determined resistant to tigecycline.Consequently, it is suggested that tigecycline may be used in the treatment of infections caused by gram negative bacilli except Pseudomonas aeruginosa.Key words: Broth microdilution method, tigecycline, gram negative bacilli, antimicrobial agent.