Multidrug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis is resistant to two first-line antituberculosis drugs, isoniazid and rifampin, resulting in the relapse of tuberculosis. M. tuberculosis grows very slowly, and thus traditional examination methods take time to test its drug resistance and cannot meet clinical needs. The use of a DNA probe makes it possible to test rifampin resistance. We developed...

Moxifloxacin is under development for expanded use against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Rifampin is a mainstay of therapy. We examined the interaction of moxifloxacin plus rifampin for log-phase and nonreplicating persister (NRP) organisms. For this evaluation, we employed our hollow-fiber infection model, in which organisms are exposed to clinically relevant drug concentration-time profiles and...

This study sought to determine whether an increase in resistance of Rhodococcus equi to the antibiotics rifampin and erythromycin occurred over a 10-year period. This was carried out by the use of E test strips for rifampin and erythromycin to determine the MIC (minimum inhibitory concentration) values of Rhodococcus equi to this combination of antibiotics.The findings of this study indicated t...

To The Editor: Immediate management of meningococcal disease requires antimicrobial drug treatment of patients with β-lactams and chemo-prophylaxis of contact persons with rifampin. High-level resistance to rifampin (MIC >32 mg/L) in Neisseria meningitidis is provoked by mutations (most frequently at the residue His 552) in the rpoB gene encoding the β subunit of RNA poly-merase (1,2). Resistan...

Background: It is difficult to treat infections caused by Acinetobacter baumannii due to multiple drug resistance. The aim of this study was to determine the efficacy of combination therapy with two broad-spectrum antibiotics colistin and rifampin on clinical and para clinical indexes of the patients with ventilator-dependent pneumonia due to imipenem-resistant to A. baumannii in intensive care...

We describe novel rifamycin derivatives (new chemical entities [NCEs]) that retain significant activity against a comprehensive collection of Staphylococcus aureus strains that are resistant to rifamycins. This collection of resistant strains contains 21 of the 26 known single-amino-acid alterations in RpoB, the target of rifamycins. Some NCEs also demonstrated a lower frequency of resistance d...

Rickettsia prowazekii, the causative agent of epidemic typhus, is an obligate intracellular parasitic bacterium that grows directly within the cytoplasm of the eucaryotic host cell. The absence of techniques for genetic manipulation hampers the study of this organism's unique biology and pathogenic mechanisms. To establish the feasibility of genetic manipulation in this organism, we identified ...