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Doctors Overusing Superdrugs

The April 1, 2003 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine gives us the news that while doctors are finally being more careful about using antibiotics for common ailments, when they do use them they are turning to the most powerful ones available, broad-spectrum superdrugs.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that from 1991 to 1999 doctors wrote 17 percent fewer prescriptions for antibiotics. The problem is that prescriptions for the high-powered broad-spectrum antibiotics doubled from 24 to 48 percent for adults and from 24 to 40 percent for children.

The same data also reports that the superdrugs were being used more and more for bronchitis and respiratory infections, even though they are generally useless against those conditions.

Lead researcher Dr. Michael Steinman of the University of California at San Francisco says, “The more we use [broad-spectrum antibiotics] now for conditions that do not require them, the more quickly bacteria will become resistant to these drugs — and when we really do need them for serious and complicated conditions, they won't be there anymore.”

Commentary: The U.S. government estimates that half of the 100 million antibiotic prescriptions written by doctors each year are unnecessary. That’s 50 million unnecessary prescriptions every year.

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