Antibiotic used soared after U.S. anthrax attacks
Wednesday March 19, 2:50 pm ET
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON, March 19 (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Americans rushed to get prescriptions for antibiotics after the October 2001 anthrax letter attacks that killed five people, U.S. government researchers said on Wednesday.
Data from a company that tracks drug prescription information suggest that people who had no business getting antibiotics somehow talked their doctors into giving them prescriptions, a team at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (News - Websites) found.
The anthrax-laced letters, sent to television and newspaper offices and the U.S. Congress, made 22 people sick and killed five. As soon as it became clear what was happening, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave antibiotics to 10,000 people in four states and in Washington.
But reports at the time suggested that many more people afraid they may have been exposed tried to get antibiotics -- notably ciprofloxacin and doxycycline, the main approved drugs for treating anthrax.
Dr. Julie Beitz, Dr. Douglas Shaffer and colleagues at FDA got data from IMS Health, a company that tracks prescription information.
It showed a big surge in prescriptions for Bayer's (XETRA:BAYG.DE - News) Cipro and doxycycline in October 2001 -- a 40 percent increase for Cipro and a 30 percent spike for doxycycline over figures for the same time in 2000.
VALID MEDICAL REASON
This added up to 160,000 extra prescriptions of Cipro and 96,000 of doxycycline in October alone, they report in Wednesday's issue of the journal Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety.
All other antibiotic use followed the usual pattern seen for that time of year, they said.
Health officials at the time urged Americans not to take antibiotics unless there was a valid medical reason to do so. But several doctors said they understood the fears of people who felt they may not be able to get the drugs in time.
Anthrax is easily treated with antibiotics if caught in time. But the inhaled version can be deadly and symptoms are not always clear. Patients can die before doctors even suspect they have breathed in anthrax.
And while the CDC has a stockpile of antibiotics for emergencies, some people may have doubted that they could be issued the drugs in time if there was a large outbreak.
Beitz's team noted that many people who got the extra prescriptions may have been simply keeping the drugs on hand for such an emergency.
"It is possible that a proportion of the U.S. prescription increases represents stockpiling of antimicrobials by concerned Americans and thus the increases may not reflect consumption by the prescription holders," they wrote.
Dr. James Hughes, head of the CDC's National Center for Infectious Diseases, said people should not do this. |
