A federal preparedness program has exercised a $36.9 million purchase option for cefiderocol, an antibiotic held in reserve for infections that no longer respond to standard treatment. Part of what the underlying contract funds is a question most parents have never had reason to ask: whether the drug can be used in children.
Right now, in the United States, it largely cannot. Cefiderocol, sold as Fetroja, is approved for patients 18 and older with complicated urinary tract infections and with hospital-acquired and ventilator-associated bacterial pneumonia caused by certain susceptible gram-negative bacteria. Children with the same infections fall outside the label.
