Free Republic

Deer ticks, like the one photographed, can carry Lyme disease/ (KPixMining/Shutterstock) In a nutshell * The antibiotic piperacillin has shown remarkable effectiveness against Lyme disease-causing bacteria, Borrelia burgdorferi, at doses 100 times lower than doxycycline, the current standard treatment. * Unlike doxycycline, which affects beneficial gut bacteria, piperacillin targets only the Lyme bacteria without disrupting the microbiome, making it a safer option, especially for children and pregnant women. * The discovery opens the door for piperacillin to be repurposed as a highly effective treatment for Lyme disease, potentially even as a single-dose preventive therapy after a tick bite. Further research...

In emergency rooms and intensive care units across the country, clinicians make split-second decisions about which antibiotics to give a patient. A new study reveals that these decisions may have unintended consequences for patient outcomes. Beginning in 2015, a 15-month national shortage of a commonly prescribed antibiotic, piperacillin/tazobactam--known by the brand name Zosyn--provided a unique opportunity to compare rates of death in hospitalized patients with sepsis who were administered two different types of antibiotics—one that spares the gut microbiome and one that profoundly alters it. Piperacillin/tazobactam is a broad-spectrum antibiotic that is commonly administered for sepsis, a life-threatening complication from...