How long should antibiotics be given?
Pneumonia patients who take antibiotics for three days improve their he alth just as successfully as those who take antibiotics for the usual eight days.
The research team led by Jan Prins from the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam had tested patients suffering from mild pneumonia acquired outside the hospital to see whether the current use of antibiotics could be reduced without compromising losing efficiency. The scientists first randomly divided the 119 patients into two groups, to which they administered the antibiotic amoxicillin for different periods of time. The control group received the substance for the usual eight days: three days intravenously and another five days as an oral preparation three times a day.
The Dutch also injected the 56 patients in the test group with amoxicillin for three days. From the fourth to the eighth day, however, the test group received a placebo instead of the oral preparation. Five days after the last dose of antibiotics or placebo, the researchers examined all treated patients, including taking x-rays.
Prins concludes from the medical diagnoses that the placebo group, which only took the antibiotic for three days, showed the same clinical success with 93 percent as the control group. Even twenty days after the end of the experiment, the researchers diagnosed successful healing in 88 percent of the test group; in the control group it was 90 percent.
The scientists see clear advantages in reducing the use of antibiotics in the future, at least for respiratory infections. In particular, the increased occurrence of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains can be minimized in this way.
