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from the give-that-rampancy-an-antibiotic! dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Clinicians prescribed antibiotics without an infection-related diagnosis nearly half of the time and one in five prescriptions were provided without an in-person visit, according to research being presented at IDWeek 2018. The study, which is the first to look at overall outpatient antibiotic prescribing, analyzed more than half a million prescriptions from 514 outpatient clinics.
Previous research has found antibiotics often are prescribed for certain symptoms (such as a sore throat or cough) when they shouldn't be.
Most of these types of illnesses are caused by viruses and therefore don't benefit from antibiotics, which only treat bacterial infections.
"We looked at all outpatient antibiotic prescribing and results suggest misuse of these drugs is a huge problem, no matter the symptom," said Jeffrey A. Linder, MD, MPH, lead author of the study and chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago. "We found that nearly half the time, clinicians have either a bad reason for prescribing antibiotics, or don't provide a reason at all. When you consider about 80 percent of antibiotics are prescribed on an outpatient basis, that's a concern."
[...] Of the 20 percent of antibiotics that were prescribed outside of an in-person visit, most were by phone (10 percent). Others were via an electronic health record system that allows prescription writing but there is no opportunity to gather information about symptoms or testing (4 percent), refill (4 percent) and online portal (1 percent). There are some cases where that may be appropriate, such as for women who suffer from recurrent urinary tract infections or teens taking antibiotics for acne. Researchers will analyze which of those prescriptions were appropriate in the next phase of research.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:54PM
Yes, and puppies and kittens are also getting over drugged and can carry MRSA and other very difficult to treat bacteria as part of the purchase.
Antibiotics saved us; ignorance will doom us.
It is wrong to phrase the over-prescribing issue as being dwarfed, though, because awareness can help lead to changes. Belittling one cause--especially the one that involves people--will not help draw attention to the widespread issue.
There are also many forms of bacteria that affect humans differently than the host that carried them in and transmitted it to you. Often, a bodies existing bacteria puts up a fight against new types being introduced--more than just the immune system is at war. For a bacteria to take over or become dominant, other bacteria(s) often get wiped out in the process due to the competition for the same resources; i.e. you.
That means taking an antibiotic you don't need weakens the defenses you have; it takes months for the microbiome to recover. This often leads to weight gain and behavioral issues/personality changes due to nutrition absorption being out of sync as well; its one reason why antibiotics can cause diarrea and other gastrointestinal distresses. And having extended bouts of diarrea would give anyone a personality change, even if you don't want to blame it on the antibiotics.
It is likely best that people refrained from using them as much as possible, but that is often hard to convince people to do.
I really wish the anti-vaccine people were anti-antibiotic. It'd prevent a lot more harm in the long-run if they were; granted, I'd prefer a cure for ignorance of all kinds, but I'll take what I can get.