Doctors Seek FDA Approval for Cheaper, More Effective MRSA Meds
Posted on November 8, 2007
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Antibiotic-resistant staph infections are notoriously expensive to treat. Tygacil and Zyvox are two drugs that can cost patients upwards of $100 per day. But new studies in the works aim to prove that cheap, generic drugs that have been around for decades are actually more effective in the treatment of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA.
Doctors at the University of California have obtained funding from the National Institutes of Health, and will soon begin clinical studies of sulfa drugs, used since the 1930s, and clindamycin, in use since the 1970s. These drugs are already used by many physicians to treat MRSA, but they are not currently FDA approved for that use. Clinical trials with 1,200 emergency room patients will begin next year, and could help win a thumbs up from the FDA.
While these antimicrobial drugs could provide a much needed temporary boost in the battle against MRSA, they only offer a short term solution. MRSA bacteria mutate at an alarming rate and will likely develop a resistance to the drugs under investigation. Other researchers are working to provide a more permanent solution in the form of MRSA vaccines.
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$100 per day? Is that why health care industry simply ignores phage therapy for MRSA infections? To make more money?
See this:
http://www.iitd.pan.wroc.pl/phages/phages.html
I’ve asked this institute for cost of treatment of my daughter’s bacterial infection (staph, not MRSA) and the total cost of it was about $100.