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CNN Live At Daybreak

Is Cipro a Two-Edged Sword?

Aired November 06, 2001 - 06:24   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: And more now on the battle against anthrax. As investigators try to learn the source of anthrax, officials say there are 17 confirmed cases and 5 suspected cases. Cipro, of course you've heard about this, is the most popular treatment, but medical experts say that Cipro may become a two-edged sword.

More now from medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In this laboratory freezer in small cardboard boxes are thousands of vials of bacteria that demonstrates the danger of overprescribing Cipro. Each of these vials represents a person with an infection that could not be treated with multiple antibiotics, some of these people died as a result.

(on camera): So in this freezer you have what looks like thousands of samples of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, and this would actually represent in a very small scale what hospitals confront every day of the week.

(voice-over): When someone has an antibiotic resistant infection, doctors often turn to Cipro, one of the strongest antibiotics around. Now thousands of Americans are taking Cipro because of the anthrax attacks, which could create a different problem.

(on camera): The more Cipro gets used, the greater the chance that harmful bacteria will figure out how to outsmart it, how to do end runs around the drug. If that happens, then Cipro and all the other drugs in its class could be rendered useless. It's happened to antibiotics in the past, and experts worry it could happen again.

DR. STUART LEVY, TUFTS UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: For cancer patients, for transplant patients, for many very sick patients, Ciprofloxacin and members of that same family are critically, critically needed. They are often the drug of last resort. I don't want to lose them.

DR. BARRY KREISWIRTH, PUBLIC HEALTH RESEARCH INST.: We're going to pay a price, maybe six months, maybe a year from now, and that is we're going to lose perhaps a major effective antibiotic class of drugs.

COHEN (voice-over): Before we explain how bacteria learned to outsmart antibiotics, let's make one thing clear, experts say the anthrax used in the attacks so far is not going to become resistant to Cipro but other harmful bacteria could.

Here's how bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics. Let's say someone's taking Cipro. At first, the bacteria don't know what to do because they've never seen Cipro before so they die. But over time, bacteria figure out how to fight off the Cipro. The bacteria, in other words, grow resistant to it. The person taking Cipro can then sneeze and send that resistant bacteria to someone else. Then when the person gets sick, the Cipro won't work. One person passes this resistant bacteria on to another, then another, and then in time it can become a national problem because we all fly around the country and share our germs. That's the potential danger.

So when thousands of Americans line up for antibiotics against anthrax, given the worries about Cipro resistance, why aren't public health authorities just switching more people over to another antibiotic that the CDC says works just as well against the anthrax we've seen so far, Doxycycline? Experts aren't as worried about resistance to Doxy, as it's called, because it's not as powerful and useful a drug as Cipro. For the answer, we go to the nightly news.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOM BROKAW, NBC NEWS ANCHORMAN: And you may be hearing a lot about these days is an antibiotic called Cipro.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: The CDC says they're trying to switch people over to Doxy, but they're concerned about public confidence in anything but Cipro. In other words, it's a psychological problem.

DR. DAVID FLEMING, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL: Until we educate people that Doxycycline is as effective as Cipro, we don't want to create concern in people that they're not getting the best drug. So we're doing this education right now to help people understand that these two drugs are equally effective.

COHEN: Two drugs equally effective against anthrax but will insistence on Cipro and only Cipro create a different and perhaps even more deadly problem?

Elizabeth Cohen, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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