For this week’s blog I’m going to answer a question from Mohamed who works as a pharmacist in Egypt and who has a specific interest in antibiotics.
 
Mohamed contacted me through the website and asked “what is the clinical benefit of cidal versus static antibiotics?” It’s a great question, and one which often causes confusion.
 
In order to know when you shouldn’t use a static antibiotic and why a static antibiotic might fail you need to know which antibiotics are static and which are cidal. This information is available deep within 1000s of pages of reference texts like Mandell or Kucers! Alternatively it is easily accessible in Microbiology Nuts and Bolts clearly under each antibiotic and there are only 310 pages in our little book :-) P.S. you can buy it here

It’s great how popular my blog about Poldark’s putrid throat has become, if you do a Google search for Poldark’s putrid throat it is the number 1 hit. Who says microbiology isn’t popular…? I have been asked by Jessica, who has read the Poldark blog, whether scarlet fever could have been the cause instead of diphtheria. So let’s consider this further, and explore the differential diagnosis of 18th Century Poldark’s putrid throat in more detail and why I came to the conclusion that it was diphtheria.