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Streptomycin is an antibiotic medication used to treat a number of bacterial infections, including tuberculosis, Mycobacterium avium complex, endocarditis, brucellosis, Burkholderia infection, plague, tularemia, and rat bite fever. For active tuberculosis it is often given together with isoniazid, rifampicin, and pyrazinamide.
Common side effects include vertigo, vomiting, numbness of the face, fever, and rash. Use during pregnancy may result in permanent deafness in the developing baby. Use appears to be safe while breastfeeding. It is not recommended in people with myasthenia gravis or other neuromuscular disorders. Streptomycin is an aminoglycoside. It works by blocking the ability of 30S ribosomal subunits to make proteins, which results in bactericidal.
Albert Schatz first isolated streptomycin in 1943 from Streptomyces griseus.
It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines. The World Health Organization classifies it as critically important for human medicine.
Streptomycin is traditionally given intramuscularly, and in many nations is only licensed to be administered intramuscularly, though in some regions the drug may also be administered intravenously.
Common side effects include vertigo, vomiting, numbness of the face, fever, and rash. Fever and rashes may result from persistent use.
Use is not recommended during pregnancy. Congenital deafness has been reported in children whose mothers received streptomycin during pregnancy. Use appears to be okay while breastfeeding.
It is not recommended in people with myasthenia gravis.
Streptomycin is an antibiotic that inhibits both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, and is therefore a useful broad-spectrum antibiotic.
Waksman and his laboratory staff discovered several antibiotics, including actinomycin, clavacin, streptothricin, streptomycin, grisein, neomycin, fradicin, candicidin, and . Of these, streptomycin and neomycin found extensive application in the treatment of numerous infectious diseases. Streptomycin was the first antibiotic cure for tuberculosis (TB). In 1952 Waksman was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in recognition "for his discovery of streptomycin, the first antibiotic active against tuberculosis". Waksman was later accused of playing down the role of Schatz who did the work under his supervision, claiming that Elizabeth Bugie had a more important role in its development.
Bugie was pursuing a master's degree in Waksman's lab at Rutgers University at this time. Prior to this, she received her bachelor's degree in microbiology at New Jersey College for Women. Although Bugie was considered to be the second author on the Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology paper, she was not listed on the patent submission. Bugie's contributions to Waksman's lab were great. In addition to her work on streptomycin, she also helped develop other antimicrobial substances,
had two peer-reviewed publications, and researched the use of antimicrobials against plant pathogens, among several other important contributions to the scientific field, particularly in regard to microbiology. The Rutgers team reported streptomycin in the medical literature in January 1944. Within months they began working with William Feldman and H. Corwin Hinshaw of the Mayo Clinic with hopes of starting a human clinical trial of streptomycin in tuberculosis. The difficulty at first was even producing enough streptomycin to do a trial, because the research laboratory methods of creating small batches had not yet been translated to commercial large-batch production. They managed to do an animal study in a few guinea pigs with just 10 grams of the scarce drug, demonstrating survival. This was just enough evidence to get Merck & Co. to divert some resources from the young penicillin production program to start work toward streptomycin production.At the end of World War II, the United States Army experimented with streptomycin to treat life-threatening infections at a military hospital in Battle Creek, Michigan. The first person who was treated with streptomycin did not survive; the second person survived but became blind as a side effect of the treatment. In March 1946, the third person—Robert J. Dole, later Majority Leader of the United States Senate and presidential nominee—experienced a rapid and robust recovery.
The first randomized trial of streptomycin against pulmonary tuberculosis was carried out in 1946 through 1948 by the MRC Tuberculosis Research Unit under the chairmanship of Geoffrey Marshall (1887–1982). The trial was neither Blind experiment nor placebo. It is widely accepted to have been the first randomized curative trial.
Results showed efficacy against TB, albeit with minor toxicity and acquired bacterial resistance to the drug.
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