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Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, September 2000, p. 2373-2381, Vol. 44, No. 9
0066-4804/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Potent Synergism of the Combination of Fluconazole
and Cyclosporine in Candida albicans
Oscar
Marchetti,1
Philippe
Moreillon,1
Michel P.
Glauser,1
Jacques
Bille,2 and
Dominique
Sanglard2,*
Division of Infectious
Diseases1 and Institute of
Microbiology,2 University Hospital, Lausanne,
Switzerland
Received 18 January 2000/Returned for modification 16 March
2000/Accepted 24 May 2000
Several types of drugs currently used in clinical practice were
screened in vitro for their potentiation of the antifungal effect of
the fungistatic agent fluconazole (FLC) on Candida
albicans. These drugs included inhibitors of multidrug efflux
transporters, antimicrobial agents, antifungal agents, and
membrane-active compounds with no antimicrobial activity, such as
antiarrhythmic agents, proton pump inhibitors, and platelet aggregation
inhibitors. Among the drugs tested in an agar disk diffusion assay,
cyclosporine (Cy), which had no intrinsic antifungal activity, showed a
potent antifungal effect in combination with FLC. In a checkerboard
microtiter plate format, however, it was observed that the MIC of FLC,
as classically defined by the NCCLS recommendations, was unchanged when
FLC and Cy were combined. Nevertheless, if a different reading endpoint
corresponding to the minimal fungicidal concentration needed to
decrease viable counts by at least 3 logs in comparison to the growth
control was chosen, the combination was synergistic (fractional
inhibitory concentration index of <1). This endpoint fitted to the
definition of MIC-0 (optically clear wells) and reflected the absence
of the trailing effect, which is the result of a residual growth at FLC
concentrations greater than the MIC. The MIC-0 values of FLC and Cy
tested alone in C. albicans were >32 and >10 µg/ml,
respectively, and decreased to 0.5 and 0.625 µg/ml when the two drugs
were combined. The combination of 0.625 µg of Cy per ml with
supra-MICs of FLC resulted in a potent antifungal effect in time-kill
curve experiments. This effect was fungicidal or fungistatic, depending
on the C. albicans strain used. Since the Cy concentration
effective in vitro is achievable in vivo, the combination of this agent
with FLC represents an attractive perspective for the development of
new management strategies for candidiasis.
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Institut de
Microbiologie, Rue du Bugnon 44, CH-1011 Lausanne, Switzerland. Phone: 41-21-3144083. Fax: 41-21-3144060. E-mail:
Dominique.Sanglard{at}chuv.hospvd.ch.
Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, September 2000, p. 2373-2381, Vol. 44, No. 9
0066-4804/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
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