The question about whether penicillin and other old antibiotics can make a comeback is food for thought. Photo: Shutterstock.comThe article on the overuse of antibiotics in hospitals and households (‘Antibiotics: too much of a good thing’, The Sunday Times of Malta, November 29) made very interesting reading.
The question about whether penicillin and other old antibiotics can make a comeback is food for thought. Prof. Michael Borg should be commended for the information he provided.
At the old pharmacy museum at the National Archives in Malta there are still containers of old antibiotics under the name ‘sulfa drugs’ which were introduced to our retail pharmacies way back in the late 1930s and early
1940s, before penicillin. There were a record number of dispensed prescriptions using this particular antibiotic.
There were several of them, namely Sulphadiazine, Sulphaquanidine, Sulphatriad,
Sulphamezatine and Sulphanilamide, all of which having a different specific use.
They were dispensed either as tablets or compounded in a mixture using ‘mucilage’. They were quite effective and widely used with rarely any side effects. Subsequently they were followed with the addition/combination of Trimetroprin. If my information is correct they are still in use in India.
Their comeback, together, as stated in the feature, with the generic Penicillin, will probably help to reduce as much as possible the super bug MRSA.
Penicillin reminds us all of Alexander Fleming, Sir David Bruce (Brucellosis) and our Maltese medical practitioner and archaeologist Sir Temi Zammit.