Antibiotics: Overused for Sore Throats?
Many Kids Are Getting Antibiotic Treatments When They Don't Have Strep Throat
Nov. 8, 2005 - Antibiotics are still being overprescribed to children with sore throats, and kids who do need them are often given the wrong ones, a new study shows.
It is estimated that at most about a third of children who are treated by physicians for sore throats actually have strep throat, with some studies suggesting that as few as 15% have the bacterial infection.
Although many people might refer to any sore throat as "strep throat," a true strep throat is one caused by infection from streptococci bacteria.
Antibiotics were prescribed to more than half of the children in the new study, published in the Nov. 9 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.
And roughly one in four prescriptions involved antibiotics other than those recommended, potentially increasing the risk for treatment failure and future drug resistance.
Not All Bad News
The findings are somewhat discouraging in light of aggressive efforts to educate physicians and the public about the dangers of antibiotic overuse, the study's researcher tells WebMD.
But he added that there is also reason for optimism. The total number of antibiotic prescriptions written for children with sore throats fell from 66% in 1995 to 53% in 2003.
"The overall trend is down, but clearly there are still too many antibiotics being prescribed," says Jeffrey A. Linder, MD, MPH, of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
Linder and colleagues analyzed data from two national medical care surveys that included information on roughly 7,000 pediatric visits to physicians for sore throats.