Biol. Pharm. Bull. 29(10) 2035—2040 (2006)

aureus have developed resistance to methicillin, and this has become an important public-health problem in all over the world. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) causes life-threatening infections, such as meningitis, bone marrow destruction, sepsis, endocarditis, septic pulmonary emboli and extensive soft tissue infection in humans; and for these, people seek an effective and safe treatment. Therefore, extensive research has been ongoing to find an effective and safe antibiotic to treat the infections caused by MRSA. Now, there exist some MRSA antibiotics, such as vancomycin, teicoplanin and arbekacin that have been widely used in clinical practice for the treatment of infections caused by MRSA. Zetola et al. reported that vancomycin could be considered as a first line therapy for the treatment of infections caused by MRSA. In addition, Boger demonstrated that vancomycin is used for the treatment of infections in patients allergic to beta-lactam antibiotics. Furthermore, Losonsky et al. found the safety and potential usefulness of teicoplanin in meningitis caused by Enterococcus faecium. On the other hand, we have reported that a large number of beta-lactam antibiotics, such as penicillin G and cephalosporins, caused a potent epileptogenic activity in rats when administered intravenously or intracerebroventricularly. Therefore, in the present study, we investigated to clarify whether or not MRSA antibiotics elicit an epileptogenic activity in rats.