More about antibiotic resistance

During an interview the Reuters had, they have asked some doctors who are more likely to give prescription antibiotics. According to the doctors they are more likely to give prescription antibiotics to smokers than to non-smokers due to infection. This is so even if they are very much aware about these people developing the risk of antibiotic resistance from a study made in America.  The smokers were like 20% – 30% more prone to infections than those who never tried smoking and so they will be more likely to get a prescription antibiotic when the time comes that they were diagnosed with infections. This is according to a research made for the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

If the smokers are given antibiotics at a rate of 30% more than the others, if not stated, it will be alarming; because of the development of antibiotic resistance in a norm and the bacteria will be more resistant. This information was given by Dr. Steinberg of the Medical School in N.J.  The inadequate use of antibiotics enables the bacteria to grow and develop the resistance, which will eventually make the drug ineffective later on. The WHO called the antibiotic resistance incident a world health crisis, this information was revealed in November of 2015.

In the researches made in the past, there were reports about cases of respiratory infections and this is because of the viruses, which are not really dealt with by the antibiotics. Though the respiratory infections that brings bacteria, some people must take antibiotics to get well. In a study made in 2013, for example, the researchers have discovered that more than 12,000 individuals have an acute respiratory infection and they need to take antibiotics to get well and to prevent being brought to the hospital for a possible pneumonia development.

Smokers were given antibiotics

Dr. Steinberg added that there is a clinical custom that doctors are more profuse in giving antibiotics to smokers than to non-smokers. To be able to find out how often the smokers were given antibiotics when compared to non-smokers, the researchers used the data to show the sample of the 8,000 patient visits to the office of the doctors from the year 2006 & 2010 for certain kinds of infections. More than ½ of the visits or consultations for infections ended up with antibiotics given to the patient.  This is not the same with those who never smoke, there are researchers that indicate how smoker were around 20% more likely to be given antibiotics. When, in fact, they only went to the doctor’s clinic for respiratory infections, the smokers were around 31% likely to walk out of the clinic with prescriptions for antibiotics.