Commonly used antibiotics associated with increased complications- JAMA study
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According to a study published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, in patients with sepsis, the use of a combination of vancomycin and piperacillin-tazobactam is associated with increased mortality risk compared with a combination of vancomycin and cefepime.
Piperacillin/tazobactam is a broad-spectrum antibiotic that is commonly administered for sepsis, a life-threatening complication from infection. In its absence, clinicians commonly use another antibiotic, cefepime, which has similar activity against common sepsis pathogens but, unlike piperacillin/tazobactam, has minimal effects on anaerobic gut bacteria.
In health, the gut microbiome is largely populated by anaerobic bacteria that rarely cause disease. Prior research has revealed that even a single dose of piperacillin/tazobactam kills most of these anaerobic gut bacteria, which play important roles in the body’s metabolism, immunity, and prevention of infections.
In their study, Dr. Rishi Chanderraj and his multidisciplinary team from the University of Michigan's Division of Infectious Disease analysed patient records from a cohort of 7,569 individuals. They compared outcomes between 4,523 patients treated with piperacillin/tazobactam and 3,046 patients who received cefepime.
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