Cold and flu season is here — but doctors say antibiotics won't help you get better faster
CBC
As the season for coughs and colds returns, medical experts have a reminder: antibiotics aren't a go-to treatment for common viral respiratory infections.
"I think that a lot of people are in the habit of still seeking antibiotics if they're finding that their illness is prolonged or more severe, just in case," said Dr. Lynora Saxinger, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton.
Overprescribing — including at a patient's request — and misuse of antibiotics is fuelling antibiotic resistance, a global health threat, giving rise to superbugs that can't be treated by first-line antibiotics.
Saxinger says patients who are prescribed an antibiotic for an illness the drugs don't treat can be given a false perception of their effectiveness.
"They get a prescription, it's for a virus, but they start to get better shortly after because they've just peaked in their illness while this whole process was going on," she told Dr. Brian Goldman, host of The Dose podcast.
"So there's also a learned behaviour where people associate getting better with having had an antibiotic prescription."
The risk of antibiotic resistance is increasing year over year and affecting patients in hospital on a daily basis, according to infectious diseases physician Dr. Jerome Leis.
"We have, for example, patients who have an infection that, because of resistance, now requires an intravenous course of antibiotics rather than pills, or now requires a second-line antibiotic that not only is less effective, but has increased risks to the patient," said Leis, medical director of infection prevention and control at Sunnybrook Health Sciences in Toronto.
In certain cases where antibiotics are no longer an option, doctors are turning to surgical methods to control infections, he added.
In 2018, one-quarter of bacterial infections were resistant to a first-line antibiotic used to treat them, and nearly 15 people died due to resistant infections, according to a 2019 report by the Council of Canadian Academies. The same report predicts resistance rates will rise to 40 per cent by 2050.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control says at least 28 per cent of the antibiotics prescribed by doctors are considered unnecessary and contribute to superbugs.
But proper stewardship of the potentially life-saving drugs — using them only when prescribed, for the bacterial infections they treat — can help ensure they remain effective. In June, the Public Health Agency of Canada released a five-year, pan-Canadian plan to combat antibiotic resistance.
Dr. Daniel Flanders, a pediatrician in Toronto, says he works hard to prescribe antibiotics only when necessary, but acknowledges that there's a balance between practising antibiotic stewardship and providing good service to patients.
"I think we need to get better and better at communicating reasons why we might choose not to treat someone's child or someone's infection with antibiotics," he said.