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Pastimes : Triffin's Market Diary -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Triffin who wrote (185)	10/9/2001 1:46:37 PM
From: Triffin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 869

BC: ANTHRAX TREATMENTS Just in case .. Tuesday October 9, 1:34 pm Eastern Time Cipro sales rise as anthrax fear persists NEW YORK, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Amid spreading fear of a biological attack, sales of the only government-approved antibiotic for treatment of exposure to the rare but potentially fatal anthrax disease rose sharply in the New York City area, new prescription data confirm. New Yorkers afraid of an anthrax attack in the weeks following the Sept. 11 destruction of the World Trade Center filled 14,814 new prescriptions of Cipro, made by Bayer AG , at New York area drugstores, a rise of 27 percent for the week ended Sept. 28. This was up from 11,676 in the same period a year ago, according to data from Atlanta-based drug research company NDCHealth. And New Yorkers are buying an average of 25 Cipro pills, 47 percent more then they did a year ago when they filled prescriptions for an average of 17 pills. The Cipro dosage to treat anthrax is two pills a day for 60 days, while a patient suffering from a gastrointestinal infection would take two Cipro pills a day for about a week. New Cipro prescriptions were up in New York, but were flat nationally, at 263,000, compared with figures a year ago. Two cases of anthrax in humans have been confirmed in Florida, and White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the spread of the disease ``remains a situation of concern.'' Bayer has said that demand for Cipro, its best-selling drug with sales worldwide of about $1 billion, is on the rise, but supplies are not threatened. The drug is made in a Connecticut plant and in Europe. The drug was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat exposure to anthrax in August 2000 and it is the only orally administered drug recommended for such use by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Other antibiotics that can be used to treat anthrax are doxycycline and penicillin. Alternative drugs are gentamicin, erythromycin and chloramphenicol.