Telavancin likely to be approved soon

As reported in Hospitalist News, this will be another option for MRSA. Like many new antibiotics today the approval will probably be restricted to complicated skin and skin-structure infections, and it’ll be up to the rest of us to figure out its other applications. I know little about it but it sounds like vancomycin “on steroids”:

“I voted 'yes,' because I think vancomycin is a dying drug, and I see vancomycin resistance all the time,” said panelist Dr. W. Kemper Alston, who is at the University of Vermont, Burlington. Those voting “no” on the safety and efficacy question cited concerns about the association of the drug with more than one toxicity.

I blogged about vanco as a dying drug here.