I'm a long term sufferer with chronic pouchitis. My Doctor has just put me on both Xifaxan plus Cipro at the same time. He is doing this because nothing else has seemed to work with clearing up my pouchitis. He mentioned he didn't like to do this, due to the threat of a super-bug. Does anyone know exactly what that means? Has anyone taken both of these at the same time? Did it help? Is it risky?

He may be thinking about the increased risk of c difficile. It might help if you take a good probiotic too to help maintain some friendly bacteria in your gut.

I am currently taking the same 2 meds. It does not seem to be working for me. I got the Flu 2 years ago, there are so many different strains that I ended up in the hospital severly dehydrated and in acute renal failure. I lost about 10 lbs it took me about 1 month to fully recover.I have chronic pouchitis and nothing seems to help.
Good luck.
Lori

hi..i have chronic pouchitis and have been on twoantibiotics and it seems to work well..one is levaquin(like cipro) and the other is tindermax..my gi is also from cleveland clinic..dr.shen..i am going to ask him to consoder alternating me from these two to another two such as kindermax an cipro..both these combinations work for me when single antibiotics did not ...as long as i eat very,very carefully and not bring on butt burn and take the two antibiotics i am doing well for the first time in over two years since my jpouch..my pouchitis always is in the form of butt burning and increased going and feeling of not completely eliminated..when i start the burning or very irritated feeling i know i am in trouble and it is not a food..right now after a month of being on the two first named drugs it has been the best i have been since i once did the kindermax and cipro...for now i plan to stay on them both.. know some drs are worried about the super bug or us becoming resistant but if so there are other antibiotics they can use on us if necessary for other problems..meanwhile if it is all we got going then i feel i need to go with it..i know others on long term usage without any bad side effects..i keep falling out on the small side of bad things happening since u.c but i figure i am due for some luck changing..thus i am going for the two antibiotics and clean diet approach...maybe i will get lucky and something else will come down the pike to replace the effective long term usage of antibiotics..cleveland clinic is right up there when new things come along so i am hoping until then if two antibiotics work and keep you in remission give it a try..rebecca

First let me preface this by saying, Jan, Please correct me if I'm wrong...but....
When your doctor refers to a "superbug" he/she is talking about the fact that (unfortunately) many of the common infections have become somewhat resistant to our orginal "normal" lines of defense (ie Cephalexin, Amoxicillin, etc. because of overuse or misuse of antibiotics - getting them for viral reasons, not completing your full course of antibiotics, people dumping their antibiotics into the water system and slight exposure over years...) and now are requiring stronger antibiotics (Levaquin, Zithromax, Biaxin, etc). Because of the double exposure to two differnt antibiotics, any infection or bug that you currently have or will be exposed to throughout your treatment will now adapt to those antibiotics, and it will require even STRONGER antibiotics to treat what we at one point thought of as common infections.
I hope that makes sense...

hi i understand now the superbug meaning but i wonder what one should do like myself who seems to only function okay on the two antibiotics?? i thought perhaps alternating every two weeks or three might help but not sure that will work for the superbug issue and not just the idea of keeping my body from getting accusomed to the antibiotics and bringing on the pouchitis..any more thoughts on that anyone?/i feel between a rock and a hard place right now..i thought in a little while i might try to get along on one antibiotic at a time but that will not work the super bug issue but it would be positive if i could get down to one anyway..not there yet however..

and then i thought perhaps this was a stopgate for me for now with the hopes something else will work for me down the road..but hopefully not the more serious immune suppresant drugs as i am sure they are as risky as the antibiotics down the road..i cannot and will not consider steroids..

thanks rebecca