HYDERABAD: Doctors are now increasingly prescribing antibiotics that were popular during grandpa’s times. This is to fight antimicrobial resistance that has become a major health nuisance with disease-causing bacteria and fungi turning intelligent to emerge as superbugs.
The Covid-19 pandemic has only hastened the revival of forgotten drugs to treat bacterial and fungal infections. Drugs used way back in 1940s are now being prescribed to attack the modern superbugs with the old medical bullets. Since the present-day germs are not accustomed to old antibiotics, they become susceptible and die.
“Forgotten formulations have now emerged as modern saviours. The experiment with old antibiotics to beat antimicrobial resistance is paying rich dividends,” said neurosurgeon Dr P Ranganadham. He said from the times of penicillin, discovered in 1928, there have been numerous drugs that saved humanity. But overuse or abuse of these drugs led to antimicrobial resistance, forcing doctors to search for new medicines.
Stating that the antibiotics of the olden days come cheap and time-tested, Ranganadham, who has seen the evolution of drugs in the last four decades, told TOI that since some of these forgotten antibiotics like colistin and clindamycin could also develop horizontal spread of resistance, doctors should think of a combination therapy.
According to Dr Shyamala Iyengar, senior consultant at Apollo Hospital in Hyderabad’s Hyderguda, India has one of the highest rates of resistance to antimicrobial agents. “One of the strategies to overcome this is to use outmoded antibiotics,” he said.
