Health and Shopping Blog

Down under in Australia, they’ve just finished one of the world’s biggest studies into the treatment of pneumonia! Working for the University of Melbourne, Dr Patrick Charles took samples from 885 patients diagnosed with pneumonia in five hospitals over a 3 year period. He analysed swabs taken from the nose and throat, and samples of blood, sputum and urine. He found that 95% of these patients had infections that could be treated with penicillin combined with Doxycycline. In other words, almost all the people who fell sick, were victims of bacteria easily susceptible to the older drugs. So what about the other 5% of patients? They were all from nursing homes and other residential facilities where people had picked up bacteria resistant to the older antibiotics. The moral of this research is very clear. If you live, work and play in the larger community and you fall sick with a bacterial infection, you don’t need to pay the higher prices for the new antibiotics. You’ll do just as well (if not better) by relying on penicillin and the other atypical antibiotics like Doxycycline pills. Don’t be misled by sharp advertising put out by the pharmaceutical industry. Save money by using the traditional remedies. More importantly, don’t give all bacteria the chance to become resistant to the newer drugs. Save them for when the need is greatest (as in when you’re visiting a hospital or nursing home).