Treatment of Bacillary Dysentery with Humatin

Abstract

A new antibiotic, Humatin was administered to 27 patients of bacillary dysentery for the purpose of investigating it's antibiotic activity, the cross-resistance to othe drugs and the increase of resistance through successive in vitro cultures.
1. The sensitivity of dysentery bacilli against Humatin ranged from 1.56 mg/ml to 6.25/mg/ml. No cross-resistance was observed to the drugs used in this trial; CM, TC, SM, L, KM, C-S, FZ, Pal.
2. The increase of resistance in vitro against Humatin was somewhat slighter than that against FZ and KM. The 3-drugs-resistant strains demonstrated almost the same degree of resistance increase as the sensitive ones.
3. Humatin was as effective in doses of 50 mg/kg/day as in doses of 20 mg/kg/day.
4. By peroral use of Humatin fever and discharge of bacilli subsided within 1-2 days in a majority of the cases, whereas more than 3 days were required in many cases for recovery of the stools in number and character.
5. Humatin produced good results in the 3-drugs (CM, TC, SM)-resistant cases.
6. It was effective also in a case with persistent bacillary discharge.
7. In one case, re-discharge of the bacilli was observed 21 days after the withdrawalof the drug.
8. The tendency, as is reported, that Humatin may cause diarrhea in some cases, might be involved in the retarded normalization of the number of stools.
9. Signs or symptoms which might be regarded as side effects could not be noted in any of the cases.