Identifying optimal dosing strategies for meropenem in the paediatric intensive care unit through modelling and simulation.

Background: Meropenem, a β-lactam antibiotic commonly prescribed for severe infections, poses dosing challenges in critically ill patients due to highly variable pharmacokinetics.

Objectives: We sought to develop a population pharmacokinetic model of meropenem for critically ill paediatric and young adult patients.

Patients And Methods: Paediatric intensive care unit patients receiving meropenem 20-40 mg/kg every 8 h as a 30 min infusion were prospectively followed for clinical data collection and scavenged opportunistic plasma sampling.

Novel histone-derived antimicrobial peptides use different antimicrobial mechanisms.

The increase in multidrug resistant bacteria has sparked an interest in the development of novel antibiotics. Antimicrobial peptides that operate by crossing the cell membrane may also have the potential to deliver drugs to intracellular targets. Buforin 2 (BF2) is an antimicrobial peptide that shares sequence identity with a fragment of histone subunit H2A and whose bactericidal mechanism depends on membrane translocation and DNA binding.