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DENVER, COLORADO. The problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is becoming
increasingly serious and has been clearly linked to the overuse of antibiotics.
Over 50 million prescriptions are written every year in the United States for
children under 18 years of age. Medical researchers at the Universities of
Colorado and Utah now report that a large proportion of these prescriptions may
be unnecessary. The researchers evaluated the prescription patterns in 531
visits to doctors' offices by patients younger than 18 years. They found that
44 per cent of patients with common colds, 46 per cent with upper respiratory
infection (URI), and 72 per cent with acute bronchitis were prescribed
antibiotics even though numerous studies have shown them to be ineffective for
these conditions. Extrapolating to all of the United States this means that 6.5
million prescriptions were written unnecessarily for common colds and URIs and
4.7 million for bronchitis. Children aged 5 to 11 years were particularly
likely to receive a prescription for antibiotics and pediatricians were much
less likely to issue an unnecessary prescription than were other physicians.
In an accompanying editorial medical doctors from the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention comment on the reasons for the overprescribing. They
conclude that many doctors are unaware of the fact that antibiotics do not work
for the common cold, URIs, and acute bronchitis. They also suggest that
pressure from parents to "do something" is an important factor and that doctors
may issue prescriptions to keep their clients satisfied. Finally, pressure to
see more and more patients means that the physician can spend less time with
each and may decide that writing a prescription for an antibiotic is more
efficient than taking the time to explain why one is not needed.
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