Three Reasons Why Daptomycin Just Can't Do Anything Right

We all know the feeling of getting acute staph aureus pneumonia and imagining how great it would feel to get a little daptomycin up in our system to clear up that pesky infection. Except it wouldn't feel great, because Daptomycin, the Charlie Brown of all antibiotics, just can't seem to come up with the cojones to kill this puny, first-day-of-infections-disease, speeding-up-evolution-by-taking-care-of-the-weak bacteria. Daptomycin is definitely not bringing home any Olympic medals this round, and is almost certainly not going to help you get better. So without further adieu, I bring you the top ten reasons why the Vioxx of the 2010's should be your last pick for both you and your patients.

1. Can only be given through IV

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There are three things that should always come in oral form: sex, protein powder, and antibiotics. Penicillin, the great-grandfather of all antimicrobial agents, figured this out in 1928. 1928! But despite its best efforts, our "maladjusted" Daptomycin just can't seem to fit in. Maybe it thinks fedoras and big glasses are cool, but when Daptomycin leaves Williamsburg, (aka, the hospital), nobody wants to be seen wheeling its anti-establishment IV bag around. Keep it in the hospital? Better yet, keep it on the shelf.

2. It Binds to Surfactant

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Let's be honest, hydrogen bonds are the scotch tape of chemistry - they look nice, but they're just getting in the way of the covalent bond that should've been. They're like that guy at the gym doing ab workouts on your bench. At the end of the day, the only ones who are gonna see your shredded core are your crossfit friends and your adopted cat. Hardly one step up the muscle ladder are the surfactant molecules. These weaker-than-weak micro-molecules serve one purpose: to break up water. It if you know of anything NOT strong enough to break up water, you should unfriend it immediately because it's only holding you and your acute pneumonia back. Despite the almost-unimaginable weakness of surfactant molecules, Daptomycin manages to once again suck even harder. When it finally manages to find its way into the lungs, Daptomycin just gets obliterated by the cotton-soft wrecking ball that is surfactant, leaving it inactivated and desperately seeking attention like Michele Bachmann anytime, anywhere. What will Daptomycin be up to in 2016? Nothing, we hope.

3. It Only Kills Gram Positive Bacteria

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Just when you thought Daptomycin couldn't get any more useless, it did. This is a guy who's definitely never heard the phrase, "Beggars can't be choosers." Already at the bottom of the barrel, this good-for-nothing "antibiotic" has decided that it's too good for gram negatives. Like a McDonalds requiring reservations, Daptomycin has lost any remaining appeal and will hopefully fall into obscurity faster than you can say "Kimye." If you can convince your patients to sweat through the "unusual bleeding," "irregular heartbeat," and "yellowing of the eyes" that come as warning labels on Dapto's packaging, you will be sure to succeed in sending your patient back to his DO to get the usual dose of the anything-but-daptomycin therapy. I don't know about you, but I'm saving this soggy-bread of a drug for placebo trials or fixing the nation's shortage of lethal injection agents.