Synergy of penicillin and decreasing concentrations of aminoglycosides against enterococci from patients with infective endocarditis

To determine whether low concentrations of aminoglycosides in combination with penicillin could effectively kill enterococci in vitro, we tested penicillin (20 μg/ml) in combination with decreasing concentrations of either streptomycin (20, 10, 5, and 1 μg/ml) or gentamicin (5, 3, 1, and 0.5 μg/ml) against 13 strains of streptomycin-susceptible and 7 strains of streptomycin-resistant enterococci isolated from patients with infective endocarditis. At 24 h, penicillin plus each increment in streptomycin concentration resulted in a statistically significant increase in killing of streptomycin-susceptible enterococci, compared with the next lower streptomycin concentration (P<0.01). At 24 h, against streptomycin-susceptible and streptomycin-resistant enterococci, there were no statistically significant differences in killing between combinations containing 5 μg of gentamicin per ml and those containing 3 μg/ml. Against streptomycin-susceptible enterococci, there were statistically significant differences in killing between combinations containing 3 μg of gentamicin per ml and those containing 1 μg/ml. Against streptomycin-resistant enterococci, statistically significant differences in killing were detected with combinations containing 5 μg of gentamicin per ml and those containing 1 μg/ml.