Chloramphenicol is a bacteriostatic broad-spectrum antibiotic that disrupts the process of protein synthesis in a microbial cell (possessing good lipophilicity, penetrates through the bacterial cell membrane and reversibly binds to the subunit 50S bacterial ribosomes, in which the movement of amino acids to growing peptide chains is delayed, which leads to a violation of protein synthesis). It is active against most strains of gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria, pathogens of purulent, intestinal infections, meningococcal infection: Escherichia coli, Shigella dysenteria, Shigella flexneri spp., Shigella boydii spp., Shigella sonnei, Salmonella spp. ( in t.ch. Salmonella typhi, Salmonella paratyphi), Staphylococcus spp., Streptococcus spp. (incl. Streptococcus pneumoniae), Neisseria meningitides, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, a number of strains Proteus spp., Burkholderia pseudomallei, Rickettsia spp., Treponema spp., Leptospira spp., Chlamydia spp. (incl. Chlamydia trachomatis), Coxiella burnetii, Ehrlichia canis, Bacteroides ffagilis, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae.
He acts on acid-fast bacteria (incl. Mycobacterium tuberculosis), anaerobes, methicillin-resistant strains of staphylococci, Acinetobacter, Enterobacter, Serratia marcescens, indol-positive strains Proteus spp., Pseudomonas aeruginosa spp., protozoa and fungi. Stability of microorganisms to chloramphenicol develops slowly.