Word: penicillin
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...This is not a one-horse field; there are other antibiotics perfectly capable of treating anthrax, including various members of the penicillin and tetracycline classes. So how did Cipro, identified in the press as the weapon of choice in the war against anthrax, claim such a visible, and valuable, spot in the public consciousness...
...THEY WORK? Cipro is the only drug approved for biological attacks--specifically for inhaled anthrax--although it's never been directly tested in humans. Doxycycline and penicillin may help as well, if given over a long term. Streptomycin or gentamicin are preferred for plague, but tetracyclines and fluoroquinolones also do the trick. For tularemia, doxycycline and ciprofloxacin are the antibiotics of choice. Prompt treatment is essential...
DIED. HANNELORE KOHL, 68, loyal wife of 41 years to former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl; by suicide; in Ludwigshafen, Germany. Since 1993 she had endured a painful and untreatable allergy to sunlight, triggered by a severe reaction to a penicillin treatment. The photoallergy, which caused hivelike rashes and fever, forced Kohl to remain indoors every day until dark. During the past 15 months her debilitating condition had worsened and left her totally homebound and dependent on painkillers...
...this reason, it is not enough to come up with new drugs; it is also imperative for us to try our utmost to extend their useful lifetime. This means we must stop misusing them. Consider the case of penicillin. For decades, it has been prescribed by many physicians for every sniffle and sneeze, even when the source of the problem was a virus. Antibiotics have been recklessly prescribed for ear and even sinus infections, many of which, as Mayo Clinic researchers recently noted, are not due to bacteria at all but to the immune system's response to fungal infections...
...such agent--daptomycin--in late-stage clinical trials. Like tetracycline, it was derived from filamentous bacteria that dwell in both soil and water. But daptomycin does not work as tetracycline does by inhibiting cellular metabolism. Rather, it disrupts the conformation of the bacterium's cell membrane, more like penicillin. The way daptomycin does this appears to be unique; in other words, the resistance that disease-causing bacteria have developed to penicillin should not readily transfer to daptomycin...