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What are cipro ciprofloxacin tablets

An antibiotic story that hit the press in a big way and caused a lot of public discussion of the importance of antibiotics and the ways in which different antibiotics are used was the anthrax attack of 2001. In October 2001, letters laced with spores of B. anthracis, the cause of anthrax, first appeared and caused a widespread panic. The vehicle for dissemination of the spores, the postal system, was completely unexpected as a terrorist target. Like the food and water supply, the postal system touches the lives of virtually everyone in the country, so everyone felt close to the story.

Fortunately, scientists already knew a lot about anthrax and its treatment. Antibiotics given soon after exposure avert the most fatal form of anthrax, inhalation anthrax. An antibiotic called ciprofloxacin, or Cipro, was administered to workers in the congressional office buildings and news buildings where letters containing the spores had been opened. By contrast, an antibiotic called doxycycline was administered to postal workers who might have been exposed to the spore-laden letters.

Soon, people all over the United States were asking their physicians whether they should take Cipro. The course of Cipro therapy required taking Cipro daily for at least 60 days, an unusually long period of therapy for an antibiotic. This course was chosen because no one knew how long Cipro, which is a relatively new drug, would take to eliminate the bacteria. There had been no cases of human anthrax in the United States for many years, so there was no standard of reference. As it turned out, few people completed the full course of Cipro therapy because of the side effects (nausea, diarrhea). Nonetheless, the timely intervention of antibiotics prevented further deaths.

Many other antibiotics besides Cipro are effective against anthrax. One is doxycycline, an antibiotic that is a lot cheaper and has fewer side effects than Cipro, but many people felt, wrongly, that Cipro was the best choice. A heated debate over the relative merits of Cipro and doxycycline developed early in the anthrax scare period. One reason, already mentioned, was that congressional staff members and other elite groups were given Cipro, whereas postal workers were given the much less expensive antibiotic doxycycline. Reporters, postal workers, and their unions immediately scented a class warfare issue. To make matters worse, Cipro was, technically, the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of anthrax. Doxycycline was not approved, in the sense that anthrax was not listed among the diseases for which doxycycline was recommended.

This case illustrates a problem in interpreting the meaning of “FDA approval” of a drug. There are many cases in which the FDA has not approved a drug for a certain application because it was ineffective or dangerous, but in the case of doxycycline, economics and timing of approval were responsible for the “approved” status of Cipro and the “not approved” status of doxycycline. Ciprofloxacin is a relatively new drug that is still under patent protection, hence, the high price. When the company that produces Cipro sought FDA approval for its drug, it included a long list of possible applications of the new antibiotic. Anthrax was included on this list. Probably anthrax was included, despite the fact that there had been no known human cases of inhalation anthrax in the United States for years, because there was talk about the possible use of B. anthracis as a bioweapon.