Antibiotics Expert

Most patients who have a history of penicillin allergy can safely take antibiotics called cephalosporins, U.S. researchers say.

Cephalosporins – which are related to penicillin in their structure, uses and effects – are the most frequently prescribed class of antibiotics. Read the rest of this entry »

If doctors used an existing simple lab test on patients with coughs or flu-like symptoms they would be better able to decide which of them might benefit from antibiotics, scientists say. They said prescriptions of expensive antibiotics for respiratory tract infections could be reduced by more than 40% if tests became more commonplace.

The German researchers found that testing for a marker of bacterial infection known as procalcitonin (PCT) helped identify patients whose respiratory tract infections would respond to antibiotics, and stopped others being offered unnecessary drugs. Read the rest of this entry »

A government proposal to slap anti-dumping duties on Chinese and Mexican imports of two key pharma ingredients will push up the prices of common antibiotics like Mox, Augmentin and Sporidex by almost 50%, say their makers.

The commerce ministry has suggested anti-dumping measures on Penicillin-G and 6-APA as provisional duty till it is okayed by the finance ministry. Companies can share their views to the government within 40 days on the imposition before a final duty is determined. However, the drug makers feel that the provisional duty itself would have done the damage, since it will take a few months for the government to arrive at a final decision. Read the rest of this entry »

Boston University researchers have found that taking low levels of antibiotics that don’t quite destroy bacteria can turn them into superbugs. While treating bacteria with insufficient levels of antibiotics produces germs that are cross-resistant to a wide range of antibiotics and when the level of antibiotic is less than lethal, the same reaction causes DNA mutations that are not only survivable, but actually protect the bacteria from numerous antibiotics.

Strains of E. coli and Staphylococcus were used by the researchers to test the effect of low level antibiotics and the scientists observed the effect of five different antibiotics on the bacteria, finding that doses that were less than lethal to the germs made them resistant to other antibiotics.
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A new class of antibiotics which target vital proteins in life-threatening bacteria could be the latest weapon in the fight against hospital superbugs.

Scientists in Switzerland have hailed the discovery as a breakthrough in the battle against multi-drug resistant bacteria, adding that the development of a new class of antibiotics is an event “that probably happens about every 20 years.”

The antibiotics, developed by Swiss biotech firm Polyphor and the University of Zurich, work by targeting key proteins in “gram negative” bacteria which are used in the creation of the outer cell membrane. Read the rest of this entry »