The pharmacologic parameters and toxicity of netilmicin (6 mg/kg/day) given once daily (qd) or thrice daily (tid) for the treatment of urinary tract infections were studied in a randomized prospective study of 60 cancer patients. The overall efficacy was 96%. Nephrotoxicity, assessed by the measure of urinary excretion of phospholipids, was lower for the patients receiving the qd regimen than for those receiving the tid regimen. Elevation of serum creatinine (20% over baseline) occurred in one patient receiving the qd regimen and in three receiving the tid regimen. Cochleotoxicity, assessed by pure-tone audiometry (250 to 18,000 Hz) occurred in one patient receiving the qd regimen and none receiving the tid regimen. Concentrations in sera were measured on days 1 and 5. No significant accumulation was observed in either group. Median serum bactericidal titers, expressed as reciprocal values (percentage of the sera with a titer .8), were measured against 25 test organisms in samples collected 6 h after the administration of netilmicin and were, for the qd group, 16 (82%) against members of the family Enterobacteriaceae and <2 (8%) against Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and for the tid group, 4 (57%) against members of the Enterobacteriaceae and <2 (0%) against P. aeruginosa. The rate of killing in serum was rapid (2 to 3 log in 2 h against P. aeruginosa; 3 to 5 log in 2 h against members of the Enterobacteriaceae) and correlated with the sampling time and hence the concentration in serum of netilmicin. The duration of the postantibiotic effect in serum depended also on the strain and the sampling time of the serum.Gram-negative infections are a major cause of morbidity in cancer patients, especially when they are neutropenic. Treatment of these infections consists of the administration of a broad-spectrum P-lactam antibiotic often in combination with an aminoglycoside. The use of combination therapy is advocated for infections due to Pseudomonas aeruginosa and is particularly important when microorganisms resistant to the 3-lactam antibiotic are responsible for the infection. A favorable outcome in patients with gram-negative bacillary bacteremia or pneumonia treated with aminoglycosides is related directly to the initial peak concentration in serum (20, 21) and to achieving a ratio of initial peak serum concentration to the MIC for the offending pathogen of greater than 6:1 (19). These observations confirm previous studies on the predictive value of the serum bactericidal titer on the outcome of gram-negative bacillary bacteremia (26,33). In addition, a prolonged postantibiotic effect (PAE) has been observed with aminoglycosides in vitro and in experimental infections (31,32). The main side effects of aminoglycosides are ototoxicity and nephrotoxicity (4,8,17,28). Studies in animals (1,11,16,23,34) have suggested that both nephrotoxicity and ototoxicity are lower when the daily dose is given as a single administration rather than in two or three divided doses over 24 h. A prospective study comparing netilmicin given onc...