A cough doesn’t mean you need antibiotics

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 00:02:00 +0000

No one wants a hacking cough for days or weeks on end. But research shows that it generally takes about 18 days to get over a standard cough-based illness. Most of us grow impatient after a week or so and head to the doctor to get a prescription. The problem with that recourse, however, is that antibiotics are usually useless against typical respiratory infections that cause coughs.

A new analysis shows that even though antibiotics might be ineffective against a lingering cough, the timing of their prescription might be fooling people into thinking that the medication worked. This pattern might increase the frequency of these unnecessary prescriptions, a hazardous practice that can increase drug resistance across many bacteria strains. The findings were published online January 14 in Annals of Family Medicine.

Salon.com > Prescriptions

A cough doesn’t mean you need antibiotics