The Antibiotic Effect of the Anti‐depressive Drug Femoxetine and Its Stereo‐isomeric Analogs on Diarrhoea Producing Enterobacteriaceae

The present investigation has been undertaken to illustrate the antibacterial effect on 20 diarrhoea producing enterobacteriaceae of an anti-depressive drug available as femoxetine and its three analogs. It has been shown that the stereo-isomeric trans forms of femoxetine are more than twice as active as the cis forms and inhibited all the strains below 400 microgram/ml (1.2 mM). The two cis compounds only inhibited 11 and 9 of the 20 strains respectively in the investigated area 100 microgram/ml - 800 microgram/ml (0.3 mM - 2.4 mM). Our investigations point out that the bacterial cell has a target for psychopharmacologically active agents. Thus the known psychopharmaca and their stereo-isomeric analogs may represent a pool of potentially new antimicrobial drugs. Furthermore the bacterial model may be useful as a model system in the study of the interaction of neuropharmacological agents and other membrane active compounds with biological membranes.