Thursday, November 03, 2005

Gout medicine and the Flu

(heads up from MedPundit)
In the days when Penicillin was hard to get and very expensive, doctors gave it with Probenecid, a medicine that increases uric acid secretion in the Kidneys to prevent gout...
Even twenty years ago we gave a dose of it with Penicillin to treat Gonorrhea...
But now one doctor suggests that it is a way to decrease the dosage of Tamiflu in event of a birdflu epidemic...
Since Tamiflu is expensive and not enough for a major epidemic, giving it with the cheaper Probenecid would enable docs to treat more people at less cost...

Sounds good to me.

And I am ashamed that Congress in the US is playing politics with the Federal Government's flu program...they criticized it BEFORE they had a chance of fully reading it and getting second opinions if it was good or bad...especially since most people working as government bureaucrats are apolitical...and often Democrats, like I am...