Flow microcalorimetry as a tool for an improved analysis of antibiotic activity: the different stages of chloramphenicol action.

Flow microcalorimetry in combination with photometric mass determination of staphylococci in suspension was used to reveal alterations in the intensity, extent and efficiency of bacterial metabolism during inhibition of protein synthesis by chloramphenicol. It could be demonstrated that these three parameters of metabolic activity were distinctly affected by this drug, and that the method described promises to be a more reliable tool for assaying the degree and the mode of bacteriostatic inhibition than the conventional determination of the minimum inhibitory concentration.