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Excerpt from www.futurity.orgBeginning in 2015, a 15-month national shortage of a commonly prescribed antibiotic, piperacillin/tazobactam, known by the brand name Zosyn, provided a unique opportunity to compare rates of death in hospitalized patients with sepsis who were administered two different types of antibiotics—one that spares the gut microbiome and one that profoundly alters it.
Piperacillin/tazobactam is a broad-spectrum antibiotic that is commonly administered for sepsis, a life-threatening complication from infection. In its absence, clinicians commonly instead use another antibiotic, cefepime, which has similar activity against common sepsis pathogens but, unlike piperacillin/tazobactam, has minimal effects on anaerobic gut bacteria.
“These are powerful antibiotics that are administered to patients every day in every hospital nationwide.”