Surveillance studies on Neisseria gonorrhoea sensitivity to penicillin and nine other antibiotics.

As increasing numbers of gonococcal strains obtained in routine isolations from patients show reduced sensitivity to penicillin and as more and more patients report that they are allergic to penicillin, other antibiotics are being increasingly frequently resorted to in the treatment of gonorrhoea. It is therefore of importance to determine the susceptibility of both penicillin-sensitive and relatively "resistant" strains to these other chemotherapeutic agents.The authors report on a study of the in vitro action of the following antibiotics against routine gonococcal isolates and strains from gonorrhoea cases in which penicillin had failed to effect a cure: kanamycin, leucomycin, chloramphenicol, dextrosulphenidol, oxytetracycline, chlortetracycline, tetracycline, demethylchlortetracycline and synnematin B. It was found that strains of low penicillin susceptibility were as sensitive to these antibiotics-with the exception of synnematin B-as were those of high penicillin sensitivity.Emphasis is placed on the need for establishing an international standard procedure for gonococcal sensitivity testing which would make it possible-as it is often not at present-to compare results obtained in different laboratories. The relation between response to treatment and the degree to which patients develop blood and tissue concentrations of penicillin is also discussed.