Officials Switch Anthrax Drugs, Plan More Tests
Germ Traces Found at N.J. Postal Site
washingtonpost.com
Jill, this sounds good to me because I've been concerned about those nasty side effects from Cipro. My mother is allergic to Levaquin, which is closely related to Cipro. -Snow
Excerpts from the above article:
Officials said they would switch medications in most cases from the brand-name antibiotic Cipro to the generic doxycycline after federal officials reported that the two medications are equally effective against the anthrax microbe. ...
Doxycycline, described as a powerful antibiotic that causes fewer side effects and costs a fraction of its brand-name counterpart, is to be distributed to thousands of workers after the CDC published additional information Friday.
The change comes less than a week after the federal government negotiated a $100 million contract with Bayer, the maker of Cipro, for the purchase of 95 million Cipro tablets.
The results of a comparison of the drugs were published in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report so that doctors and hospitals would immediately have the option of switching, agency officials said.
Rhonda Smith, an agency spokeswoman, said the change was part of an evolving education on what combats anthrax successfully; before the tests whose results were published Friday, only Cipro had been tested against anthrax.
"Our recommendations are being updated and revisited continually, and as we know more, we make hopefully better decisions," she said.
Letters explaining the switch were handed out to mailroom workers and hundreds of others picking up 10-day dosages of medication. Most people who were taking the initial 10-day course of medication and who need to continue will be immediately switched over to doxycycline for the remaining 50 days.
"The CDC and the D.C. Department of Health have determined this is the most effective treatment for you as it poses a substantially lower risk of side effects than Cipro when used long term," read the letter from the Postal Service, signed by Sylvester Black, manager of the Capitol Metro Operations division. |
