Antibiotic Resistance Targeted in 21st Century Cures Act

Here is a story that is of concern to me as a Lyme patient treating late-stage neurological Lyme disease. As you may know, different antibiotics are required to treat the bacterium borrelia Bergdorferi and the other co-infections that are often carried by the same ticks that carry the Lyme disease. So Lyme disease patients often need a variety of antibiotics to fully recover.

The amendment to the Cure Act being considered would prevent a second antibiotic to be tried as a treatment for a disease for which a first antibiotic did not work. As Lyme disease patients, those of us with chronic infection would therefore be allowed to try only one antibiotic. If it failed to cure the affliction, that's the end of the road.

Any amendment to the Cures Act aimed at curbing the development of superbugs should, in my opinion, focus on the overuse of antibiotics in the livestock population, not human population. This is where the grossest neglect and overuse of antibiotics is most egregious.

-Bob

Click http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/Washington-Watch/52611 for the full story:

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