I got this from Reuters News Service yesterday.

Pat Gima, IBCLC
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
______________________________________-

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some US postal workers have started to take an
antibiotic called doxycycline, a less expensive alternative to the anthrax
medicine Cipro, after getting the green light over the weekend from federal
health officials, the US Postal Service said.

The postal service took action after getting an advisory on Saturday from
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites) and the
Washington, DC, Department of Health, a USPS spokesman said on Sunday.

Studies ``support the use of doxycycline as the drug of choice ... both for
newly identified individuals and for completion of the course in those
previously started on (Cipro),'' the CDC said in an advisory issued late on
Saturday to area postal workers on its Washington Web site.

``They (federal health officials) made an announcement that that's what
they're providing for postal service employees,'' a USPS spokesman said.

Only ``a small fraction'' of the estimated 6,000 Capitol-area workers on
medication after possible exposure to anthrax had begun taking the new
drug, the spokesman said. ''It's just a matter of what they provide.''

``Doxycycline has less side effects and is more readily available ... so
they made the switch to doxycycline,'' the USPS spokesman said.


Miami-based Ivax Corp. said on Friday it would supply the US government
with more than 1.2 billion doxycycline tablets as federal health officials
build a national stockpile of drugs to treat anthrax.

That announcement came after the government signed a deal with Bayer last
Wednesday to supply 100 million tablets of Cipro.

Scientists have praised doxycycline as a cheaper drug with fewer possible
side effects than Cipro, the brand-name drug made by German firm Bayer AG.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases (news - web sites), said doxycycline was being
recommended now because it had fewer side effects than Cipro, the
antibiotic first prescribed to those affected.

``It's more available. It's potentially less toxic ... and it's much more
inexpensive, Fauci told CNN's ``Late Edition.''

Fauci echoed comments by CDC Director Jeffrey Koplan on Friday. Although
Cipro has become a ``panacea'' for curing anthrax, the CDC would
``recommend it in the same breath as doxycycline, which would be just as
good,'' Koplan said on a phone conference with reporters.

Bayer last week agreed to sell Cipro to the government at a steep discount
of 95 cents per tablet for its branded product. That figure is still double
the over-the-counter price of doxycycline, which normally sells for between
45 cents and 50 cents each in drugstores.



Mailto:[log in to unmask]

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html