combination therapy

(noun)

Combination therapy is the use of more than one medication or other therapy. Most often, these terms refer to the simultaneous administration of two or more medications to treat a single disease.

Related Terms

Examples of combination therapy in the following topics:

  • Effects of Drug Combinations

    • Antimicrobial drugs can interact with other drugs in deleterious ways or can be used in combination to combat microbial infections.
    • Interactions between alcohol and certain antibacterials may occur, cause side-effects, and decrease effectiveness of antibacterial therapy.
    • Clinicians have recommended that extra contraceptive measures be applied during therapies using antibacterials that are suspected to interact with oral contraceptives.
    • This method is called combination therapy and is used when the nature of a microbial infection is unknown, as typified by the combination of the antibiotics ampicillin and sulbactam.
    • Further, tuberculosis has been treated with combination therapy for over fifty years.

  • Spectrum of Antimicrobial Activity

    • Broad spectrum antibiotics are also used for drug resistant bacteria that do not respond to other, more narrow spectrum antibiotics and in the case of superinfections, where there are multiple types of bacteria causing illness, thus warranting either a broad-spectrum antibiotic or combination antibiotic therapy.

  • History of Antibiotic Therapy

  • Cryptococcosis

    • The ten-week survival averages near 70% with optimal therapy.
    • Hodgkin's lymphoma), sarcoidosis, liver cirrhosis, and patients on long-term corticosteroid therapy.
    • Intravenous Amphotericin B combined with oral flucytosine may be effective.
    • Persons living with AIDS often have a greater chance of disease and higher mortality (30-70% at ten-weeks), but recommended therapy is with antifungal agents such as Amphotericin B and flucytosine.

  • Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (PID)

    • The primary mode of therapy is an antibiotic regimen.
    • Some of the most commonly used antibiotics and combinations of antibiotics are: cefoxitin or cefotetan plus doxycycline, cefoxitin plus doxycycline, clindamycin plus gentamycin, ampicillin and sublactam plus doxycycline.

  • Double-Stranded DNA Viruses: Adenoviruses

    • A combination of conjunctivitis and tonsillitis is particularly common with adenovirus infections.
    • Adenovirus is used as a vehicle to administer targeted therapy in the form of recombinant DNA or protein.

  • Primary Immunodeficiency Diseases

    • The main members are various types of severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID).
    • This may range from immunoglobulin replacement therapy in antibody deficiencies—in the form of intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) or subcutaneous immunoglobulin (SCIG)—to hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for SCID and other severe immunodeficiences.

  • Considerations in Microbial Control

    • Sterilization can be achieved by applying the proper combinations of heat, chemicals, irradiation, high pressure, and filtration.
    • Preparation of injectable medications and intravenous solutions for fluid replacement therapy requires not only a high sterility assurance level, but also well-designed containers to prevent entry of adventitious agents after the initial product sterilization.

  • HIV and AIDS

    • Current HAART options are combinations (or "cocktails") consisting of at least three medications belonging to at least two types, or "classes," of antiretroviralagents.
    • Combinations of agents which include a protease inhibitors (PI) are used if the above regime loses effectiveness.

  • Biological Control of Microbes

    • Examples of such biological control included bacteriotherapy, bacteriophage therapy, malaria therapy, probiotics, and the use of living maggots .