Teicoplanin with other drugs: possible pharmacological interactions.

The contemporaneous employment of two or more drugs may present the risk of modifying the required therapeutic effect or producing adverse reactions. These interactions are of a pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic type. Teicoplanin is an antibiotic with a glycopeptide structure, produced by Actinoplanes teichomyceticus, active against both anaerobic and aerobic Gram-positive bacteria that are resistant to various chemotherapeutic drugs (beta-lactam and macrolide antibiotics, tetracyclines, co-trimoxazole). Then the aim of this work was to verify experimentally the possible pharmacological interactions between teicoplanin and oral hypoglycemic (phenformin and glibenclamide), or oral anticoagulant (warfarin) or bronchodilator (theophylline) drugs. Teicoplanin (3-15 mg/kg/die i.p. for 4 days) administration to the rat did not significantly (p > 0.05) modify the glycemia, prothrombin and partial thromboplastin times, the hypoglycemic effect of phenformin (2.5 mg/kg/die os for 4 days) and glibenclamide (0.5 mg/kg/die os for 4 days) or the anticoagulant effect of warfarin (0.5 mg/kg/die os for 4 days); moreover it did not significantly (p > 0.05) modify the pharmacokinetics of aminophylline (5 mg/kg i.v.) on the rabbit. In conclusion our results documented that teicoplanin does not interfere with phenformin, glibenclamide, or sodium warfarin activities nor with aminophylline pharmacokinetics.