She’s been on antibiotics almost nonstop since her diagnosis. Oral antibiotics worked until puberty. By her teenage years, she’d run out of those and had to go into the hospital for IV antibiotics that would take a week or two to work their magic.
In her 30s, the antibiotics would take five weeks to knock out the bugs, and another two months after that for her body to finish healing.
Now she gets the most cutting-edge treatment for cystic fibrosis, a combination of three medications, approved by the FDA in 2019. In younger people, that therapy, called Trikafta from Vertex Pharmaceuticals, helps reduce infections and the need for antibiotics.
But Lawrence, like other older cystic fibrosis patients with some lung damage, still has infections roll in every few months. Even during the pandemic, when she rarely left the house and wore a mask everywhere, antibiotic-resistant infections still found her. “It’s in the soil. It’s in the environment. It’s everywhere,” she said.
Shah, of the Mayo Clinic, said he noticed about six years ago patients would come in with harder-to-treat infections. They were sicker than he would have expected and the typical drugs didn’t work or took longer to make a difference.
Boucher, of Tufts, said she sometimes has to offer patients the choice of saving their life with an antibiotic, but at the cost of harming their kidneys or hearing or both. Some antibiotics damage the cranial nerves, involved in hearing and balance, as well as the kidneys.