Viruses like influenza and coronavirus are all over the news, so now is a good time for a reminder that antibiotics only treat bacterial infections, not viral ones.
Many people don’t know that antibiotics won’t work on viral infections. Complicating matters,
It’s not always easy to tell one type of infection from the other, and the temptation to play it safe caused problems.
“There are a lot of myths out there,” said Dr. Ulysses Wu, the Section Chief for Infectious Diseases at St. Francis Hospital, “so, for example, for norovirus, people will still get antibiotics people will get antibiotics that think that, oh we can treat this just in case this is a bacterial issue, even though we may know it’s norovirus.”
Many patients don’t like the idea of just letting their body fight off an infection without medicine
And, he said, many doctors have been willing to provide an antibiotic to make a patient happy.
“Another thing is the pressures on healthcare,” he said, “we don’t have time, so we can’t sit here and explain if we have to see a patient every five to ten to fifteen minutes why you don’t need this antibiotic and why it’s potentially dangerous.”
Antibiotic overuse is dangerous because the more bacteria see these antibiotics, the more chances they have to evolve new defenses against them, which, in turn, means newer antibiotics need to be developed. However, according to Dr. Wu, that’s where we run into another problem.
“Unfortunately, drug manufacturers are not really making [those] drugs anymore, because why would you make a drug that you would only take for one week when you can make another drug like a high-cholesterol drug that you take for life,” he said.
Dr. Wu said, going forward, both doctors and patients need to be more judicious with antibiotics.
“I would just say see your health care provider, but the problem with that is the healthcare providers are some of the worst at prescribing these antibiotics as well,” he said, “but with enough education, we are hoping that it is swinging back the other way.”