3 ms·
Out of curiosity, is there a reason antibiotic cocktails aren't used more often? Cost? Seems like it would be more productive and play to human nature if we co
by ethbro 10y ago
Out of curiosity, is there a reason antibiotic cocktails aren't used more often? Cost?
Seems like it would be more productive and play to human nature if we could decrease the cost of cocktails and mandate that they're always used instead of singular antibiotics.
- wolfram74 10y agoWhen considering the axis of creating super bugs, cocktails would probably exacerbate the problem, since now you're applying several stressors in parallel. Unless you had like, 5 or so fundamentally different avenues of attack, then you could get, what, 30~ unique combos? Most people don't need anti-biotics more than 10 times in their life? If it they were equally valid in any case, doctors could just choose randomly from the set of cocktails they haven't used on a given patient before. I'm certain a cell biologist would tell me this is a dumb plan for some reason, though.
- maxerickson 10y agoI think a big part of it is that single antibiotics have been quite effective. So there isn't a developed practice of using cocktails and the interactions and so on aren't necessarily well tested/understood. The most recent course of antibiotics I took was a combination of antibiotics though, so it's changing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoxicillin/clavulanic_acid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoxicillin/clavulanic_acid