3 ms·

>If you live in a lyme-tick area, you should have antibiotics on hand at all times. Does this mean oral or topical? And if topical, would tryclosan be enough?

• eigenloss 7y ago
  He's talking about oral antibiotics; these tick-borne infections propagate through your bloodstream, so topical antibiotics aren't going to do anything. Triclosan has effectively zero efficacy anyway (since we pump so much of it down our sewers): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4295542/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4295542/ Unfortunately, since antibiotics are prescription-only, what forgotmypw3 is recommending is effectively illegal in the US. A much better option is to coat all of your clothing in permethrin, avoid wooded/grassy areas, and check yourself for ticks often.
  • privateSFacct 7y ago
    If you travel internationally you can generally get a scrip overseas for first line antibiotics
    • eigenloss 7y ago
      This is correct. The one saving grace of borreliosis is that azithromycin/doxycycline/etc are largely all out-of-patent, so the generics are cheap regardless of where you are.
• forgotmypw3 7y ago
  Yes, oral. Triclosan has little effect on anything except being toxic to humans and wildlife.