What is the standard dose of erythromycin when treating s. pneumoniae, or similar bacteria?
No one in their right mind would use erythromycin to treat strep pneumonia infections in this decade. So if you really wanted clinically relevant results, you should choose a different antibiotics. Somewhere in the range of 30% of s. pneumoniae are fully resistant to erythro – hence the loss of interest in this drug. in the OLD days, these doses would be used: 250 mg q 6 hrs for standard pneumonia 500 mg q 6 hrs for legionella pneumonia. Those are the doses used in humans of adult size. Don’t know the quantities of antibiotic that you need in a disc for in vitro testing — you could probably find that out from the most recent CLSI standards – or just ask your local hospital’s micro lab to tell you what they use. For s. pneumonia, the most relevant antibiotics to test would currently be: penicillin moxifloxacin ceftriaxone imipenem if you really HAVE to test a “macrolide”, choose azithromycin – since that still rarely gets some usage clinically. Clarithromycin and erythromycin really do
