Macrolide therapy

This past week I started on yet another experimental therapy. This time it’s long- term Macrolide therapy using Azithromycin.

As an add-on therapy, recent studies indicate that the long term use of macrolides can help decrease asthma symptoms, including wheezing and shortness of breath.

I’ll will be starting with 250 mgs of Azithromycin every other day and will re-evaluate after 3 to 6 months to see if there’s been any noticeable improvement in my lung health.

Macrolide therapy has actually been around for over a decade, but not enough large scale studies were done at the time to sway pulmonologists in trying it on their patients. That seems to be changing now and many asthma specialists are taking a second look at this therapy, especially in patients where nothing else seems to work. For me it could mean a double benefit, as there is there is evidence to suggest that antibiotic therapy also helps in treating bronchiolitis obliterons.

Im not huge fan of taking antibioctics for the obvious reasons, but after reading the literature it seems the possible benefits outweigh the risks. Other than possible drug resistance, the only serious side effect is deafness, though the occurrence is extremely rare. Hey, it can’t be any worse than taking long term steroids, right? I mean that sh*t will mess you up if not flat out kill you.