Despite efforts to reduce the number of unnecessary prescribed drugs, physicians continue to recommend too many antibiotics for sore throat and bronchitis. This flood of antibiotics has led to many bacteria becoming immune to treatment.
There is always the danger of bacteria becoming immune to certain treatments if there is an over use of prescribed antibiotics. Hence, many health experts recommend that physicians should refrain from prescribing unnecessary antibiotics for a disease. In spite of this, researchers of a new study found that antibiotics are prescribed indiscriminately for sore throats and bronchitis.
It is a known fact that antibiotics work only on bacterial infections and that sore throats and bronchitis are caused by viruses. In spite of this, antibiotics are prescribed at a rate of 60 percent for sore throats and 73 percent for bronchitis.
"For sore throat, antibiotics should be prescribed about 10 percent of the time," said study author Dr. Jeffrey Linder, a researcher in the division of general medicine and primary care at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
For this new study, researchers used data of 39 million adults who had bronchitis and 92 million adults with sore throats who were treated by primary care physicians or in emergency rooms between 1996 and 2010. The team found that primary care visits for sore throats declined from 7.5 percent in 1997 to 4.2 percent in 2010. For bronchitis, the team found that emergency department visits increased from 1.1 million in 1996 to 3.4 million in 2010.
Since 1990 to date, the rate of antibiotic prescription for sore throat has decreased by only 10 percent from 70 percent in 1990 to 60 percent in 2013.
"The story for bronchitis is even more bleak," Linder said. "The antibiotic prescribing rate was 73 percent and the right prescribing rate for bronchitis, according to guidelines, is zero," he said. "That hasn't changed at all over the last 30 years."
According to Linder, both patients and physicians are to be blamed for this. Patients demand antibiotics each time they visit a doctor and doctors fear that if they don't prescribe an antibiotic, their patient's condition may worsen to pneumonia or strep throat.
Researchers of the new study said that the over use of prescribed antibiotics can prove to be very dangerous. Not only do they make such drugs more prone to illegal use, it also helps bacteria build resistance to the antibiotic. Later, when the body is treated for the same infection, antibiotics may prove to be ineffective as the bacteria has already built resistance to the drug.
"There is concern about antibiotic overuse causing super bugs and things we are not going to be able to treat down the line," Linder said. "I think what's missing from the conversation is the fact that we are prescribing and people are taking a medicine that has nearly a zero chance of helping them and a very real chance of hurting them."
