A safety alert was issued over Pfizer Inc.’s antibiotic ‘Zyvox’ by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. A comparative study between three antibiotics found a higher chance of death in seriously ill patients administered by Zyvox.
This is not the first time that mankind is subjected to a situation like this. There have been instances from the past which have shown us the fatal results of a drug going wrong.
Zyvox or linezolid, is an approved drug in the United States for treatment of a variety of bacterial infections, including pneumonia and skin infections and is also administered to those resistant to other drugs
In the latest trial, Zyvox was compared to other counterparts vancomycin, oxacillin and dicloxacillin. The FDA said on its website:
Patients treated with linezolid had a higher chance of death than did patients treated with any comparator antibiotic, and the chance of death was related to the type of organism causing the infection.
As per the study, Patients infected with gram-negative bacteria, both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria, or who were infection-free when they entered the study were prone to greater death risk while those with only gram-positive bacteria infections were out of the danger.
There is a need for more strict regulations if humanity is to be saved from these backfiring missiles called antibiotics.