Not a directly flu-related story, but antibiotics would doubtless be used to treat opportunistic infections in flu patients. Via the Globe and Mail, a CP story by Helen Branswell: Antibiotics hit guts longer than thought. Excerpt:
This is your gut. This is your gut on drugs.
A new study reveals that a common antibiotic disrupts normal bacterial levels in the digestive tract of healthy adults for longer than previously thought. Six months later, in fact, some beneficial types of bacteria were still wiped out or remained at levels lower than before the drugs were taken.
“You don't want to be giving readers the impression that we shouldn't be using antibiotics (when needed),” said Dr. David Relman, senior author of the study, which was published Tuesday in the journal PLoS Biology.
“But it's the flip side. It's the trade-off part. ... Because we do overuse antibiotics.”
Dr. Relman, an infectious-diseases specialist at Stanford University and the Veteran Affairs Hospital at Palo Alto, Calif., conducted the study with a team of colleagues. Funding for the work came from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
Antibiotics are not a targeted treatment – the drugs do not zero in on the bacteria you want to kill and leave intact the rest of the body's normal and healthy bacteria. That is why taking them to cure one problem can give rise to another – for instance yeast infections or C. difficile diarrhea.
