I have written in the past about my excitement over new molecular techniques to diagnose lower extremity infections. I really believe that this is the future for both bacterial and fungal disease. These tests are incredibly sensitive, specific and rapid with results possible in hours rather than days. My greatest concern has been that, to … Read more
When most of us think about minocycline it is for the oral treatment of gram positive infection, in particular MRSA. In fact, the drug is effective against multidrug resistant gram negative organisms, including Acinetobacter baumannii (AB). This point was driven home to me recently when I saw that my favorite ID journal Clinical Infectious Diseases … Read more
USA Today ran an interesting story yesterday about a 19 year old woman given an antibiotic by a friend for a “sore throat” who developed Stevens Johnson Syndrome. This is a terrible incident and my thoughts and prayers go out to the young woman and her family. What bothered me however was the way in … Read more
In my post last week I mentioned I would write a follow up to discuss my opinions on the use of these drugs for lower extremity infections. I have not yet had the opportunity to try either so these are really “top line” thoughts taken what I know, have read or heard from others, into … Read more
In this entry I will continue to explore some of the new antibiotics that have been recently approved for use in acute bacterial skin and skin structure infections (ABSSSI). I will discuss these two together since they are quite similar in a number of important ways and share many of the same properties. Both dalbavancin … Read more
As I mentioned in my previous post, this has been a pretty exciting time in the area of lower extremity infectious diseases. Not only do we have 2 new drugs for onychomycosis (to be covered in future posts) but we also have 3 new FDA approved antibiotics for the treatment of, in FDA Speak; “acute … Read more
I confess…I have been a bit lackadaisical in my scanning through the journals I receive each month. This point was driven home to me yesterday when I went to find room on my desk to put some work and realized it was totally covered with stacks of journal back issues I had put aside with … Read more
This past Sunday, July 15, I had the pleasure of participating in a radio interview on WOKV, Jacksonville, FL, the largest, most listened to talk radio station in Northern Florida. Here is the link to the audiostream: http://wokv.media.streamtheworld.com/audio/save_leg_save_101730761.mp3 The show was hosted by Desmond Bell, DPM. Des, a former student “done good”, is the Executive … Read more
I recently came across some fascinating data which breaks down the number of outpatient prescriptions written by podiatrists for all different classes of drug in 2010. Unlike various surveys that have been done over the years by different magazines, this is hard data based on the actual number of scripts. I would like to comment … Read more
One of the trickiest issues in prescribing linezolid for patients with MRSA or VRE infections is the potential for a drug-drug interaction, leading to serotonin syndrome (SS), with various serotonergic psychiatric medications. It seems that every pharmacy computer system in the world goes crazy with warnings when you attempt to write for this antibiotic while … Read more