Doctors
Issue Guidelines for
Limiting Antibiotics Use
By Jennifer Brown
Doctors
should not prescribe antibiotics for most colds, coughs
and sore throats because they don't help and their overuse
is making them less effective against other infections, the
nation's second-largest doctors' group said Monday.
For
most healthy adults, the best treatment for bronchitis, most
sinus infections, colds and coughs is over-the-counter cold
remedies, according to the American Academy of Physicians-American
Society of Internal Medicine.
Experts
have warned for a decade that overuse of antibiotics is causing
germs become resistant to drugs. "If we can lower our total
antibiotic consumption by 20 or 30 percent, we can show an
effect in changing the rate of prevalence in these resistance
organisms," said Dr. Ralph Gonzales of the University of Colorado
Health Sciences Center.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that up to half of
the 133 million doses of antibiotics administered daily outside hospitals are
unnecessary because they are being prescribed for viral infections that don't
respond to antibiotics.
The
Food and Drug Administration has proposed requiring labels
on antibiotics reminding doctors to prescribe them only when
truly necessary. Doctors often feel pressured to prescribe
antibiotics when they are not needed because patients demand
them, said Dr. Vincenza Snow, senior medical associate at the
American College of Physicians. The guidelines, presented in
Monday's Annals of Internal Medicine, are intended for treatment
of healthy adults, and not for patients over age 65 or people
with long-term medical conditions such as diabetes. They were
developed by a panel of doctors assembled by the CDC and led
by Gonzales. The American College of Physicians-American Society
of Internal Medicine represents 115,000 physicians.
How
to protect yourself ? Transfer Factor!
For
more information on any of 4Life’s™ products, please
feel free to contact us. Use your back button to return
to the homepage that contains our contact information.
If you have any questions or need assistance with ordering,
we are pleased to help you in any way we can.
