Antibiotics

Southern California's supermarket price war found a new front Wednesday when Stater Bros. started filling a selection of antibiotic prescriptions for free. Albertsons said that it would match the offer at the Albertsons Sav-on Pharmacies in its stores, but that customers would have to ask for the deal. Vons said it had no plans to follow Stater Bros. Ralphs also said it would not match the offer but might introduce a similar program at a later date. Analysts said the move was part of a recession-fueled battle for customers among the large grocery chains.

The decision on whether to give young children antibiotics to treat ear infections has been swinging from one extreme to the other as conflicting clinical trials have pushed pediatricians first toward widespread use of antibiotics, then toward a “watch and wait” approach in which most infections seem to clear up on their own. Two new trials reported Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine are nudging the pendulum back toward...

As health experts warn of the growing danger of antibiotic resistance, a new study suggests that doctors are partly to blame: They encourage resistant bugs to flourish by treating many people who have colds and other viral respiratory ailments with antimicrobial drugs that are virtually useless.

The Food and Drug Administration must address the use of antibiotics in livestock, a federal judge in New York has ruled in a lawsuit, a signal that the FDA may soon ban the practice due to longstanding public health concerns. The ruling favors a coalition of plaintiffs including the Natural Resources Defense Council, which filed suit last May in a bid to push the FDA to exert more control over agricultural use of penicillin and tetracycline, two popular antibiotics used in feed to protect chickens, pigs and cattle from disease and speed their growth.

The instructions aren't on any box of medicine, but Mexicans know them all the same: At the first sign of sore throat or fever, race to the pharmacy for antibiotics. Take as you see fit. Even though the law requires a prescription for antibiotics, pharmacists in Mexico seldom ask for one before handing them over. And they hand them over by the boatload: nearly 2 billion doses of antibiotics a year, enough for two full courses of treatment for almost each of the nation's 110 million people.

Meat producers should use certain antibiotics only to assure animal health and stop using the drugs to increase production and promote growth, the Food and Drug Administration said Monday. The recommendation to cut back on the use of antimicrobial drugs comes amid rising concern that extensive use in animals contributes to antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria afflicting humans. "The development of resistance to this important class of drugs, and the resulting loss of their effectiveness as antimicrobial therapies, poses a serious public health threat," the FDA said in a draft guidance statement.

Bristol-Myers Squibb is warning against the use of the antibiotic drug Tequin in diabetic patients, the Food and Drug Administration said Thursday. The company is also strengthening its warning that the drug can cause low and high blood sugar levels in patients, the FDA said. Since Tequin was approved in 1999, there have been "rare cases of life-threatening events" involving patients who took the drug, the agency said.

An antibiotic made by French drug maker Sanofi-Aventis may reduce some symptoms when asthma worsens but it does not improve breathing capacity, according to a study financed by the drug company. The study, published in last week's New England Journal of Medicine, found that 278 adults who took the antibiotic telithromycin -- sold by Sanofi-Aventis under the name Ketek -- for 10 days after their attacks showed a drop in asthma symptoms.

Re: "Stater Bros. offering free antibiotics," Oct. 1: It's an established fact that physicians overprescribe antibiotics and as a result, certain antibiotics are losing their effectiveness. If Stater Bros. and other companies want to save their customers money, they should lower prices on other products or offer other medications for free, but not antibiotics. Dr. Arman Afagh Riverside

With its blunt warning that antibiotics in meat "pose a serious threat to public health," the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has finally acknowledged what many scientists have been saying for a long time. For years, evidence has been mounting that extensive use of antibiotics in livestock, particularly to promote growth or prevent the spread of disease in crowded pens, has resulted in the development of drug-resistant bacteria. The issue is not that the meat itself is infected or that consumers are ingesting antibiotics with their protein, but that the overuse of antibiotics is diminishing the efficacy of crucial medications needed for human use. Estimates are that 70,000 Americans each year die from infections that once could be treated with common medications.