Antibiotics are over prescribed

Link: Prescribing of Antibiotics to Children Still at a Level to Cause Drug Resistance, Experts Warn.

Regular prescribing of antibiotics to children in the community is sufficient to sustain a high level of antibiotic resistance in the population, warn experts in a study published on bmj.com today. UK general practitioners are strongly encouraged to reduce antibiotic prescribing to minimize the risk of drug resistance, yet prescribing antibiotics to children remains common practice, write David Mant and colleagues at the University of Oxford. A paper published in 1999 reported that 55 percent of children aged 0-5 years in the UK (the group of patients who receive most antibiotics in the community) receive an average of 2.2 prescriptions for a �-lactam antibiotic like amoxicillin from their general practitioner each year. Although a reduction in prescribing (and the strategy of recommending a 24- to 48-hour delay before filling antibiotic prescriptions) has probably resulted in about a 40 percent decrease in consumption since then, unpublished data suggest that community antibiotic prescribing is again rising, they say. This week's BMJ also reports on a study showing that UK GPs are still prescribing antibiotics for a large proportion of patients with minor infections, despite national guidance. So they set out to assess the effect of antibiotic prescribing on antibiotic resistance in individual children in primary care.