Study says doctors shortening lives by prescribing unnecessary antibiotics

By Isobel Williams via SWNS

Doctors could be making us sicker by prescribing antibiotics for coughs, experts have warned.

New research suggests that the antibiotics commonly prescribed for coughs do nothing to help patients recover, and taking one too many can cause severe side effects.

The overuse of antibiotics can cause dizziness, nausea, diarrhea, and rash along with a chance of serious adverse effects including a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction and a rare skin disorder.

Despite these risks, doctors are giving away antibiotics without any evidence that they are needed, the researchers from Georgetown University, Washington DC, argue.

Professor Dan Merenstein from Georgetown University School of Medicine said: "Patients have come to expect antibiotics for a cough, even if it doesn’t help. Basic symptom-relieving medications plus time brings a resolution to most people’s infections.

“Upper respiratory tract infections usually include the common cold, sore throat, sinus infections and ear infections and have well-established ways to determine if antibiotics should be given.

“Lower respiratory tract infections tend to have the potential to be more dangerous since about three percent to five percent of these patients have pneumonia.

"But not everyone has easy access at an initial visit to an X-ray, which may be the reason clinicians still give antibiotics without any other evidence of a bacterial infection."

For their study, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, the team prescribed participants with lower respiratory tract infections—such as bronchitis, chest infections or pneumonia-- commonly used antibiotics.

They discovered that taking an antibiotic had no effect on the duration or overall severity of the cough, compared to soldiering through without antibiotics.

The team believes the unnecessary prescribing of these pills comes from the doctor’s inability to tell apart bacterial and viral infections.

Professor Mark Ebell, from the College of Public Health at the University of Georgia, said: “Physicians know, but probably overestimate, the percentage of lower tract infections that are bacterial; they also likely overestimate their ability to distinguish viral from bacterial infections.

“In our analysis, 29 percent of people were prescribed an antibiotic while only seven percent were given an antiviral.

"But most patients do not need antivirals as there exist only two respiratory viruses where we have medications to treat them: influenza and SARS-COV-2. There are none for all of the other viruses.”

To determine if there was an actual bacterial or viral infection present in their patients, beyond the self-reported symptoms of a cough, the researchers conducted advanced lab tests.

This revealed that, for those with a confirmed bacterial infection, patients receiving an antibiotic recovered from their cough in the same amount of time as those receiving nothing—around 17 days.

The team notes that their findings are very concerning as the overuse of antibiotics can lead to antimicrobial resistance—drug resistance in bacteria—which could be extremely dangerous.

The World Health Organisation released a statement on April 4, 2024, stating: “Uncontrolled antimicrobial resistance [due to the overuse of antibiotics] is expected to lower life expectancy and lead to unprecedented health expenditure and economic losses.”

Further research and trials are needed on the subject, but the findings suggest that people should be cautious about taking antibiotics for their coughs.

Professor Merenstein concluded: “We know that cough can be an indicator of a serious problem.

"It is the most common illness-related reason for an ambulatory care visit, accounting for nearly three million outpatient visits and more than four million emergency department visits annually.

“Serious cough symptoms and how to treat them properly needs to be studied more, perhaps in a randomized clinical trial as this study was observational and there haven’t been any randomized trials looking at this issue since about 2012.”