An antibiotic medication used to treat a variety of bacterial infections, Azithromycin may be the right treatment for you or someone you know. Read on to learn everything you need to know about this medication including what it’s used for, how it works, how to take it, and its common side effects. Show
What is Azithromycin?Also marketed under the generic brand names Zithromax, Zithromax Z-Pak, Zmax, AzaSite, and Zithromax TRI-PAK, Azithromycin belongs to a class of medications called macrolide antibiotics. Azithromycin is a prescription medication used to treat various types of bacterial infections, such as middle ear infections, strep throat, pneumonia, traveler’s diarrhea and certain types of intestinal infections. It is also used to prevent and treat a severe type of infection known as mycobacteria or MAC. How Does Azithromycin Treat Bacterial Infections?As a macrolide antibiotic, Azithromycin works by inhibiting the growth of bacteria to stop the bacterial infection from multiplying and continuing to spread. How Do You Take Azithromycin?Always be sure to consult with your health care provider first in regards to beginning a new prescription drug medication. Also, it is critical to take your medication in accordance to the recommendations of your doctor and as per the directions on the prescription label. It is crucial to follow the directions as per your doctor to prevent and treat infection. To prevent infection, Azithromycin is usually taken once a week, the same day each week. To treat infection, Azithromycin is taken daily, once a day, the same time each day. It is important that you continue taking the medication even if you begin to feel relief from your symptoms to prevent the return and regrowth of your bacterial infection. Azithromycin is taken orally with or without food, typically once a week. If you experience some stomach discomfort when taking this medication, you may take it with food. It is recommended that you take this medication in regular time intervals for the best effect. How Long Does it Take Azithromycin to Start Working?How long azithromycin will take to start working depends on the bacterial infection it is treating. You may begin to feel relief from your symptoms the first day you start the medication. However, in order for the drug to reach full effect, your treatment may last between 3 and 7 days. What Are Common Side Effects of Azithromycin You Should Know Of?Keep in mind that your doctor has prescribed you this drug as he or she decided that its potential benefit for treating your symptoms is greater than its risk of side effects. Common side effects of Azithromycin are stomach upset, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or loose stools and abdominal pain. Consult your doctor or pharmacist if any of these side effects continue for a prolonged period of time or worsen in intensity. While it is not typical to experience severe side effects from Azithromycin, serious side effects include changes in hearing such as reduced ability to hear or deafness, issues with the eyes such as drooping eyelid, difficulty speaking or swallowing, muscle weakness, or certain signs of problems with the liver such as fatigue, severe stomach upset, yellowing of the eyes or dark colored urine. Azithromycin in the Treatment of COVID-19Azithromycin as a treatment for coronavirus disease is currently being studied. Used alone or in combination with other drugs, Azithromycin has been used to treat hospitalized patients who had bacterial infections from COVID-19. However, at this time its effectiveness is being reviewed and more information is necessary to draw conclusions on its effectiveness in treating bacterial infections from COVID-19. Azithromycin may be the solution treatment for you or someone you know is suffering from a bacterial infection. CareCard can help make your prescription drug payments more manageable, helping you save up to 85% on prescription drugs. You can search for an Azithromycin coupon here and learn how CareCard can help make your medication payments more affordable. Like many kids, I was plagued with regular strep throat infections. And, like some kids, my penicillin allergy prevented me from taking the first-line antibiotics to treat those illnesses. So, like many—probably too many—kids and adults, I got Z-Pack antibiotics. Now, decades later, I’m sad to say that basically never happens. Unlike other antibiotics that were usually difficult for me to take as a kid and required multiple doses a day for 10 days or more, Z-Packs only required a breezy five-day course of small, often pink pills. When I got a Z-Pack, I wasn't exactly happy, but I felt like the end to my misery was just a few days away. It was a solution—and I knew relief would come relatively quickly. Z-Pack antibiotics, we were told, were safe and effective at treating approximately a billion different conditions. So, what happened to Z-Packs? And why am I stuck with long, boring courses of other antibiotics these days instead? As it turns out, there are some pretty good reasons. Wait, remind me what Z-Packs are?A Z-Pack (also called a Z-Pak, Zmax, or Zithromax) is literally just azithromycin, a standard antibiotic introduced in 1992, formulated in a package of six pills, which are taken over five days. That short time commitment was a huge part of their appeal. Other antibiotics may require multiple doses a day for 10 or 14 days at a time, Tara Vijayan, M.D., assistant clinical professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, tells SELF. “The Z-Pack was a nice defined course and relatively short,” she says. “It made people feel like they can do this; they can complete their course and they’ll be done with it.” Plus, the ones I took were usually hot pink and came in a blister pack rather than a bottle—factors that mattered a lot to a sick and miserable 8-year-old me. They were “cheap, easy, cute, and they had a little marketing zing,” Neha Vyas, M.D., a family medicine physician at Cleveland Clinic, tells SELF. And, Dr. Vyas says, they’re indicated for a bunch of different health issues (including skin infections, sinus infections, pharyngitis, and gonorrhea), which made them an appealing option when the first-line treatments weren’t available. For instance, before azithromycin, if you had a penicillin allergy and needed an antibiotic for a case of strep throat, your only option was likely a cephalosporin antibiotic, which still has some cross-reactivity with penicillin allergies, Dr. Vyas explains. So, if there were any worries about allergies, a Z-Pack was an obvious, nearly all-purpose choice. So, what happened to Z-Packs?To be clear, nothing really happened to Z-Packs specifically, Dr. Vyas says. They’re still around and still frequently prescribed to treat a few specific conditions. But lots of things happened around Z-Packs over the last several years that made doctors realize that their prescribing practices weren’t quite right. In fact, in many ways, the rise and fall of the Z-Pack is simply a reflection of the way our understanding of antibiotics as a whole has developed in the past decade. We now know so much more about which antibiotics are best used for which illnesses, how the overuse (and misuse) of antibiotics contributes to antibiotic resistance, and the what the optimal time course is for various antibiotics. All of this resulted in Z-Packs becoming a bit less unique and less suited for some common illnesses. Does azithromycin work immediately?It takes 7 days for the medicine to work in your body and cure Chlamydia infection. If you have sex without a condom during the 7 days after taking the medicine, you could still pass the infection to your sex partners, even if you have no symptoms.
Is Zpack a strong antibiotic?So, what is a Z-pack actually? Unfortunately, many patients don't know or aren't told that the “Z” in Z-pak stands for azithromycin, which is a powerful macrolide antibiotic. All medicines in this class work by stopping bacteria reproduction, eventually killing the population, and curing the infection.
Is ZAlso referred to as “Z-Paks,” Z-Paks are easy to use, generally affordable, and highly effective. Azithromycin is quickly absorbed when you take it by mouth, easily entering your body tissues so it can fight the bacteria causing your infection and stay active for a long time.
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