Up to 43% of Antibiotic Prescriptions in the U.S. Are Unnecessary or Improperly Written, Analysis Finds

The World Health Organization earlier this year called antimicrobial resistance—pathogens’ ability to evade medical interventions—one of the 10 largest threats to global health. In the U.S. alone, according to a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report, 35,000 people die each year due to antibiotic-resistant infections. A new study published in the BMJ points to one major propagator of the problem: doctors are prescribing antibiotics when they shouldn’t. In fact, up to 43% of U.S. antibiotic prescriptions may be “inappropriate,” according to the research. Antibiotics either kill bacteria or keep them from multiplying. By definition, they work only against bacterial illnesses—and yet, research shows they’re often needlessly prescribed for viral illnesses like the flu and common colds. That’s not only a waste of resources; it may also contribute to antibiotic resistance, since bacteria get better and better at evading drugs each time they encounter them. The authors of the BMJ paper analyzed data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, which asks a representative sample of U.S. physicians to describe patients’ office visits during a specified period of time. The authors examined data from more than 28,000 medical visits that took place in 2015, which can be statistically extrapolated to represent almost 991 million visits nationwide. Antibiotics were prescribed during 13.2% of these vis...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Research Source Type: news