Is the “full course of antibiotics” full of baloney?

Follow me on Twitter @JohnRossMD Antibiotic resistance is an emerging threat to public health. If the arsenal of effective antibiotics dwindles, treating infection becomes more difficult. Conventional wisdom has long held that stopping a course of antibiotics early may be a major cause of antibiotic resistance. But is this really supported by the evidence? According to a new study in the BMJ, the answer is no. The notion that a longer course of antibiotics prevents resistance started early in the antibiotic era, when doctors found that patients with staphylococcal blood infections and tuberculosis relapsed after short antibiotic courses. Today, we know that patients with bloodstream infections may require several weeks of antibiotics for cure, and those with active tuberculosis need many months of multiple antibiotics. But these patients are not representative of most people who receive antibiotics today. In fact, the optimal length of treatment in many common infections is not well studied and may be more than a little arbitrary. One infectious diseases doctor has suggested, somewhat satirically, that most of our current rules for antibiotic administration have more to do with the number of days in the week than they do with robust scientific evidence. The authors of the BMJ study reviewed the data on length of therapy in several common infections, such as strep throat, cellulitis (skin and soft tissue infections), and pneumonia. In most conditions, shorter courses of therap...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Drugs and Supplements Health Infectious diseases Source Type: blogs