Will infrequent antibiotics cause or prevent resistance?

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Shirley and Ragnar

Shirley and Ragnar

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I'll post this on the old board too, but if you see this and have an answer, please reply, especially if you are a vet!

Dr. Jen wants to put Ragnar (who is very infection-prone, possibly from his years of untreated IBD) on a maintenance dose of antibiotic, giving it twice a week instead of daily. I am skeptical because of my own 30 years' experience with antibiotics as a chronic UTI patient. I am sure this works the same in cats as in humans.

My own experience tells me that if you give a low dose or stop an antiobiotic too soon, you will wipe out the least resistant bacteria and allow the most resistant ones to flourish. Therefore, you should hammer away with the antibiotic until the infection is gone, full dose, full steam ahead.

Actually, my own chronic nephritis was wiped out by accident, when a doctor put me on a lifelong "maintenance dose" of Macrodantin and forgot to tell me or the pharmacist that it was one a day, not four. I kept getting bottles of Macrodantin that said "Take one capsule four times a day," took them for five years, and was cured. If I'd taken one a day, I'd still be taking them, and might be on dialysis by now or dead.

Anyway - back to my original question: will low or intermittent doses prevent infection AND resistance, or will they "inoculate" the bacteria against the antibiotic and cause resistance to develop faster?

Blessings!
 
Continuos use of antibiotics, especially at reduced dose/frequency tends to lead to development of microbes resistant to that antibiotic. However, in some cases that type of dosing is best for the animal. My Spot who probably had IBD was on continuous Metronitazol for months.
 
Thank you, Larry and Kitties! Ragnar needs the continuous antibiotic, and what concerns me is the less frequent , twice-a-week dose. It sounds as if you agree with me that this will lead to resistance more quickly than a regular, daily dose. I'll pass this on to his doctor and hope she will at least look into it further. I'd like to know, for instance, if there are studies that show a less frequent dose will lead to less resistance, as she believes. My experience as a patient tells me the opposite!

Thanks and blessings!
 
Definitely not a dr, vet or tech! But I just responded to a thread for Karen's Pearl about 'pulse therapy' with antibiotics. Cuddles was kind of on pulse therapy of Baytril. Just because she had recurrent UTI's, and my vet & I were thinking it was because of her horrible teeth (& bacteria going into her system). So anytime she started to act punky, I'd give her a few doses (1 shot SID) of Baytril, and she'd start acting better again (for months). This worked for her, and she NEVER followed any norm.. so maybe it was just something that worked for her.. but nobody else.

She was on the injectable Baytril just because after her severe hypo (before testing & finding the board), Clav gave her serious tummy issues, and amoxi caused her to have seizures while on it! So the best option for her was inj Baytril. She was getting sub-q fluids SID, so when she started acting punky, I'd just inject a dose of Baytril in with her fluids for a few days, and it did seem to make a difference with her. Course, she was up there in age.. couldn't be put under for a dental, and had compromised kidneys. So we weren't very concerned about building up any immunities or anything like that.

Also, not sure what he's on them for.. so maybe if that one stops working, could he move to another AB? Course, not sure if twice a week would be considered 'pulse therapy' or whatnot.. especially if he needs to be on it all the time. I would only need to give Cuddles a few injections maybe once a month or two, and it seemed to take care of the issue. (So sorry if this doesn't apply to you, but wanted to throw my experience in here, in case it made you think of anything else to ask your vet.)
 
Thank you - I appreciate that!

Ragnar is *only* 13, maybe 14 soon or in the spring, so we don't want him to become resistant - he could have five years left (or more; a friend recently lost her kitty at age 20). I didn't feel right having him put under for a dental either, though, so they gave him something to make him drowsy and pain meds (only for a cleaning - I'm sure they'd have done more for an extraction).

Maybe what Dr. Jen is doing is "pulse" therapy. He needs antibiotic for his triaditis (Ibd, inflamed pancreas, hepatic lipidosis), and recently developed a UTI while on Amox, so he needs something else. I am only going by my own experience, being wary of the small or infrequent doses. Of course, the alternative might be to give him a full dose all the time, and that might be too much AB... although the Macrodantin worked that way for me.

Blessings!
 
Steph & Cuddles (GA) said:
I just responded to a thread for Karen's Pearl about 'pulse therapy' with antibiotics.
Click to expand...

Could you give me a link to that post, Steph? It might give me some valuable info too, but I couldn't find it in Search. Thanks!
 
Thanks for this discussion. It is very valuable to me too, since both Cocofang and Minibeast have medical/surgical issues which means they are highly susceptible to infection (bladder and stoma/lungs, respectively). Antibiotic resistance is a major concern since both are very young and will always be at high risk. I don't know if we should do a several times-a-week dosing, pulse dosing, or continuous dosing, or keep on with the periods of dosing like we're doing now.

So far my vets (who are very good and not afraid to admit they don't know) haven't really been able to lay out the pros and cons for me in a clear way. The issue is very scary regarding Mini's airway problems in particular because when he inevitably does get a bad aspiration pneumonia, we will really need to have effective antibiotics.

Is there any kind of specialist who might be able to address the options more effectively?

By the way, did you see these articles opposing pulse therapy? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article ... -0011b.pdf

laur
 
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