United States – Sometimes, medical officers prescribe antibiotics to help treat a cough. Still, a recent study shows that the drug will not help reduce severe coughing and its duration—even if bacteria is the cause.
Limited Impact on Lower Respiratory Tract Infections
Leading to lower respiratory tract infection, only 3% to 5% of the affected patients can become more severe with pneumonia as a result, said the lead researcher, Dr. Dan Merenstein, a medical professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C., as reported by HealthDay.
“But not everyone has easy access at an initial visit to an X-ray, which may be the reason clinicians still give antibiotics without any other evidence of a bacterial infection,” Merenstein said in a Georgetown news release.
Call for Further Research
According to Merenstein, some patients now anticipate receiving antibiotics for a cough.
Researchers have tracked antibiotic use in patients with lower respiratory tract infections to determine whether it can impact patients.
Antibiotics were prescribed to 29% of people only, and they did not show any effect on cough compared to people who didn’t have a prescription.
Duration of Illness Unaffected
It also concurred that irrespective of antibiotic treatment, it would take 17 days to become free of the disease.
The overuse of these antibiotics may result in the development of drug resistance to the harmful bacteria.
“Physicians know, but probably overestimate, the percentage of lower tract infections that are bacterial,” said researcher Dr. Mark Ebell, a professor with the University of Georgia College of Public Health. “They also likely overestimate their ability to distinguish viral from bacterial infections.”
Importance of Proper Diagnosis
“We know that cough can be an indicator of a serious problem. It is the most common illness-related reason for an ambulatory care visit, accounting for nearly 3 million outpatient visits and more than four million emergency department visits yearly,” Merenstein said, as reported by HealthDay.
“Serious cough symptoms and how to treat them properly needs to be studied more, perhaps in a randomized clinical trial as this study was observational, and there haven’t been any randomized trials looking at this issue since about 2012,” Merenstein added.