Antibiotic Treatment Not Necessary for Majority of Children with Conjunctivitis
Most children with infective conjunctivitis do not need treatment with an antibiotic, suggests a study published by The Lancet.
One in eight school children have an episode of conjunctivitis every year. This amounts to more than 1 million episodes in the United Kingdom and more than 5 million in the U.S. Diagnosis of the condition is usually straightforward but doctors find difficulty in differentiating a viral cause from a bacterial cause. Standard practice is to prescribe antibiotic eye drops, although evidence to support this decision is scarce. Antibiotic resistance is also a growing global problem, state the authors.
Peter Rose of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and colleagues did a randomized trial to investigate the effectiveness of an antibiotic treatment when compared with a placebo. Over 300 children were recruited onto the study from 12 medical practices in Oxfordshire UK, from 2001 to 2004. Half were assigned to chloramphenicol eye drops—the most commonly used antibiotic for conjunctivitis in the UK—and half to placebo eye drops. The investigators found no significant difference in the cure rate after 7 days. Eighty-six percent of the children were clinically cured in the antibiotic group compared with 83 percent in the placebo group. Even in children who had a bacterial infection, the clinical cure rate did not differ significantly between the antibiotic (85 percent) and the placebo groups (80 percent). The researchers suggest parents should be encouraged to treat children themselves without medical consultation, unless their child develops unusual symptoms or the symptoms persist for more than a week.
Rose states, “We have shown that symptoms resolve without antibiotics in most children with acute infective conjunctivitis . . . The health economic argument against antibiotic prescription for acute conjunctivitis is compelling. The cost of 1 million general practice consultations and antibiotic prescriptions every year is substantial. However, parental concern and the current exclusion policy of many schools and nurseries for children with conjunctivitis could make implementation of a change in prescription policy difficult. An education program and change in school policy to reflect national public health advice might be needed before family doctors can realistically achieve a reduction in antibiotic prescriptions.”
NICE, France -- A global survey of 4,500 people in 11 countries who reported taking an antibiotic within the past 12 months found many people were concerned about antibiotic resistance but fewer understood how improper use of antibiotic medications contributes to the problem. Based on these results, the international committee of health experts overseeing the survey called for tailored antibiotic ...
A study of how the immune system reacts to strains of antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria — emerging strains that sicken otherwise healthy people, or so-called “community-acquired” infections — has shown for the first time that these strains are more deadly and better at evading human immune defenses than more common S. aureus strains that originate in hospitals and other healthcare ...
Fewer antibiotic prescriptions lead to fewer superbugs. That's the take-home message behind a new study in the Oct. 15, 2005 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, now available online. The study found that reducing antibiotic use for pediatric respiratory tract infections resulted in lower rates of carriage of drug-resistant bacteria. Drug-resistant bacteria, commonly called superbugs, are fast becoming a problem ...
Most children with infective conjunctivitis do not need treatment with an antibiotic, suggests a study published by The Lancet. One in eight school children have an episode of conjunctivitis every year. This amounts to more than 1 million episodes in the United Kingdom and more than 5 million in the U.S. Diagnosis of the condition is usually straightforward but ...
BETHESDA, Md. -- A national survey sponsored by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID) to assess consumer awareness of serious infections found a majority of consumers (66 percent) have either heard or read about the problem of antibiotic resistance in treating serious infections. The majority (52 percent) believe antibiotic resistance is a very or extremely serious problem in the ...
Bacteria and viruses are the microscopic organisms – otherwise known as germs -- that are responsible for causing and transmitting illness and disease. These microbes are so small, that according to the American Society for Microbiology, if the smallest of all microbes was the size of a baseball, an average bacterium would then be the size of the pitcher's mound, and just one of the millions of cells that make up your body would be the size of the ballpark!
