Q&A WRITTEN REPLIES

ANTIBIOTICS: The Government has accepted advice from the Committee on Safety of Medicines (CSM) to limit the prescribing of a combination of antibiotics known as co-trimoxazole, Tom Sackville, Parliamentary Secretary for Health, announced yesterday.

Michael Trend, MP for Windsor and Maidenhead, had asked if the Medicines Control Agency had considered the place of co-trimoxazole in current clinical practice. Mr Sackville replied that the agency had consulted the CSM, which had advised that although there was no new safety issue, modern practices necessitated a change. Co- trimoxazole has been available since 1969, and more than 85 million prescriptions have been written. In recent years it has been used to treat Aids-related infections.