In her N.Y.Times
column in today’s Science section, Dr. Abigail Zuger offers a comprehensive
overview of the problem of penicillin allergy in most of its complexity, given
her three-column space.
Penicillin came
into use initially, like DDT, at the tail end of World War Two, and its
widespread use saved literally hundreds of thousands of lives from a variety of
bacterial scourges, including strep, staph and syphilis. But its gross overuse
during the next thirty years led to a high degree of resistance, which
pharmaceutical researchers countered by developing a host of new antibiotics —
some similar, based on the penicillin (pen) structure, some quite different. At
the same time, adverse reactions were noted in sensitive individuals, ranging
from itchy rashes to more serious blistering lesions, to the dreaded
life-threatening allergic hyper-reaction known as anaphylaxis.
Dr. Zugers’ column, The Penicillin Superstition,
brings the problem of pen allergy into perspective. While certainly not
downplaying the severity of true allergy, she points out that the large
majority of people who believe they are pen-allergic are actually not; and
among those who are, the majority have the mild form. She discusses the
decision-analysis conscientious physicians must perform when deciding whether
to administer the drug to a patient with a severe infection who claims, or
whose family claims, or whose medical record indicates, a problem with pen…..ToRead More….
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