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In Buffalo, New York, a different AI tool misheard Dr. Lauren Bruckner when she told a teenage cancer patient it was a good thing she didn’t have an allergy to sulfa drugs.

Through trial and error, the team had discovered that penicillin was much more effective and safer in fighting bacteria in animals than sulfa drugs, which were the treatment for infections at the time.

This is also true of multiple oral antibiotics in the class known as sulfa drugs.

The drugs ranged from broad-spectrum penicillins, which increased the risk by 27 percent, to sulfa drugs, which were associated with more than double the risk.

Macrolides are not heavily used in Africa, where W.H.O. guidelines still recommend penicillins and even older sulfa drugs because they are cheap and effective.