Antibiotic is extensively used in clinical practices for treating bacterial infections. Yet, antibiotic resistance is also a serious global health concern and resistant bacteria have posed tremendous threat to global health in 21st century. A recent population-based cohort study was conducted to investigate the relationship between duration of prescribed antibiotics, their effectiveness and associated risk of infection-related complications. Overall, the findings indicated that patients with antibiotic prescriptions for 6-7 days or 8-14 days had greater risk of developing an infection-related complication in the first few days compared with patients that received a 5-day prescription. The findings further support the previous researches that no additional benefit in prescribing longer antibiotic courses could be found compared with shorter antibiotic courses.
Keywords: antibiotics, antibiotic resistance, infection-related complications, antibiotic prescriptions
Reference:
Palin V, et al. Clin Infect Dis 2021;ciab159.
