Children are at substantially increased risk of contracting drug-resistant infections in the months after taking a course of antibiotics, a British public health official said.
Paul Cosford, medical director at Public Health England, on Wednesday told members of parliament that children are 12 times more likely to contract drug-resistant infections in the three months after being prescribed antibiotics, suggesting that their unnecessary use poses a direct risk to individual patients, as well as a broader threat to society as a whole.
“We’ve got good evidence that if you or I have a course of antibiotics now, within three months our risk is three times to get a resistant infection of some sort because we’ve had the antibiotics affecting all the organisms in our bodies,” he told the Science and Technology Select Committee.
He said the figures, based on two major reviews, highlighted the need to continue driving down reliance on the drugs.
“There is a growing body of evidence that taking antibiotics makes it more likely that your next infection will be a resistant one, so prudent use of these life-saving medicines is essential,” he told reporters.
The study cited by Cosford, in fact found that children who had urinary tract infections (cystitis) were 13.23 times as likely to have contracted drug-resistant strains if they had been given antibiotics in the previous six months.
In a previous survey, 90 percent of general practitioners said they come under pressure from patients to hand out the antibacterial medication, while 45 percent said they had done so knowing it would not help.
Mark Woolhouse, professor of infectious disease at the University of Edinburgh, said that the figures matched his qualitative experience from the clinic.
Antibiotics pose a risk of subsequent illness, because the drugs do not uniquely target the infection, but also eradicate useful bacteria in the gut, he said.
In the ecological niche that opens up after a course of antibiotics, opportunistic infections can spring up.
“Antibiotics are a good thing when prescribed correctly, but they can have longer-term disadvantages of all kinds,” Woolhouse said.
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