Pathogens of all types are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics. Consequently, simple infections can be hard to treat. Natalie Ma, cofounder of Felix Biotechnology, writes for Stat on the difficulty of finding an antibiotic to treat her all-too-common urinary tract infection, and the side effects she continues to suffer from the antibiotics she took.
Tens of millions of people get urinary tract infections “UTI’s” each year. Antibiotics at one time treated these infections easily. Now, tens of thousands of people with UTI’s around the world are dying because antibiotics are not able to wipe out these bacteria-causing infections. Rather, we are seeing a rise in antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, each year, nearly three million Americans are diagnosed with antibiotic-resistant infections. More than 35,000 of them end up dying.
Ma was first prescribed nitrofurantoin for her UTI, and her symptoms went away. But, only temporarily. Three weeks later, her symptoms returned.
Ma then took Macrobid. But, it too was not able to kill her urinary tract infection. With the amoxicillin cocktail she next took, she was vomiting and ended up with a yeast infection. Antibiotics often have serious side effects.
The side effects of the antibiotics Ma took were extremely serious. Ma still had her UTI infection several days later. And, she was in worse physical shape. The antibiotics she had taken had killed off the good microbes in her gut, along with some of the bad ones, leaving the remaining bad ones to prevail.
It took more than a year for Ma to be cleared of her UTI. And, that was only after being prescribed two other antibiotics. Her face swelled and her throat constricted after taking one of them, forcing her to be hospitalized. The second, cipro, worked well but left her with a sea of rashes and open oozing itchy sores all over her body.
Ma still suffers from the side effects of the antibiotics she took. It can sometimes still be painful for her to pee and her digestive system has never recovered. She can no longer digest some basic foods.
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