OBJECTIVE To assess whether, on the basis of one blood test, penicillin allergy might be excluded sufficiently for general practitioners to give oral penicillin to patients claiming a history of penicillin allergy. DESIGN Prospective study of patients referred by general practitioners. SETTING Outpatient allergy clinic in a district general hospital. PATIENTS 175 referred patients who gav...

Aspergillus nidulans is able to synthesize penicillin and serves as a model to study the regulation of its biosynthesis. Only three enzymes are required to form the beta lactam ring tripeptide, which is comprised of l-cysteine, l-valine and l-aminoadipic acid. Whereas two enzymes, AcvA and IpnA localize to the cytoplasm, AatA resides in peroxisomes. Here, we tested a novel strategy to improve p...

A comparison of the binding of radioactive penicillin G to whole cells and the membrane fraction derived from Pseudomonas aeruginosa KM 338 was made. This organism has intrinsic resistance to penicillin. The binding to the membrane fraction which catalyzed peptidoglycan synthesis followed saturation type kinetics and saturation was achieved at approximately 2 nmol of penicillin G per ml, wherea...

BACKGROUND Since the publication of the Prophlyactic Penicillin Study II in 1995, the management of penicillin prophylaxis for children with sickle cell disease (SCD) after 5 years of age has been controversial. In this study, we sought to describe current practice patterns of pediatric hematologists related to cessation of penicillin prophylaxis for children with SCD after 5 years of age. PR...

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this retrospective study was to ascertain the clinical safety of administering carbapenems, namely imipenem/cilastatin and meropenem, in patients with a history of penicillin allergy compared with administering carbapenems in patients with no reported penicillin allergy. Carbapenems are similar in chemical structure to the penicillins and therefore are associated with ...

Although penicillin is the drug of choice in syphilis, treatment failures with benzathine and procaine penicillin have occurred in neurosyphilis. Patients allergic to penicillin have traditionally been treated with tetracycline but, since this drug diffuses poorly into the cerebrospinal fluid, its use in neurosyphilis is uncertain. In the case reported here, a penicillin allergic patient with g...

During the isolation of penicillin resistant mutants of Brucella abortus, B. suis, or B. melitensis two effects of the antibiotic were observed: (1) rapid population changes involving the establishment of nonsmooth mutants during growth in increasing concentrations of penicillin; and (2) the occurrence of smooth, penicillin resistant cells whose phenotype differed depending on whether they grew...

To-day few clinicians doubt the efficacy of penicillin as the sole curative agent in the treatment of syphilis, and the wide range of arsenical and bismuth preparations at one time available have virtually disappeared from the pharmaceutical market. The first few sailors to be given penicillin for syphilis were treated by Mahoney, Arnold, and Harris (1943), which event was followed by numerous ...

Introduction The treatment of gonorrhoea in Denmark is as yet no serious therapeutic problem, as the majority of gonococcal infections can be cured by penicillin. Nevertheless, in an increasing number ofcases a higher dosage of penicillin is required than was the case just a few years ago. At the Dermato-venereological Department of the University Hospital, a single treatment dose of 300,000 un...

Since January 1996, and over a 3-year time span, a significant spread of serotype 6B multidrug-resistant (MDR) pneumococci, susceptible to penicillin and resistant to erythromycin, clindamycin, tetracycline, chloramphenicol, and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, was noted in young carriers living in central and southern Greece. Using restriction fragment end labeling and penicillin binding protein...