Antibiotics may not be the cure-all that everyone thinks they are. It turns out that most cases of severe and potentially fatal diarrhea illness in children are caused by an infection picked up outside of the hospital after patients have taken prescribed antibiotics. The findings reveal the importance of improving antibiotic prescriptions among children, according to Medical News Today.
The bacteria in question that causes diarrhea illness is known as Clostridium difficile. An estimated 17,000 children aged 1 to 17 years receive infections from this bacteria each year, according to Boston.com. Yet a new study shows that 71 percent of these infections aren't associated with a hospital stay. Instead, the infections usually followed a course of antibiotics prescribed by a pediatrician.
The bacteria is one of the biggest causes of infectious diarrhea. The bacterium causes at least 250,000 infections in hospitalized patients and 14,000 deaths every year among children and adults in the U.S., according to the CDC.
This particular finding highlights the importance of not overprescribing antibiotics. Bacteria are continually picking up drug-resistant genes, which means that if antibiotics are used too much, then they become ineffective against the bacteria they're supposed to get rid of. In fact, a recent study revealed that about half of all hospitalized patients are given antibiotics during their stay.
"Give the many reasons patients need hospital care, that's not particularly surprising," said Tom Frieden, CDC Director, in an interview with NewsWorks. "But what did really surprise me is that doctors in some hospitals prescribe three times as many antibiotics as others, even though the patients were being cared for in similar areas of each hospital."
Needless to say, it's important to improve antibiotic prescriptions for children and regular patients. When they're prescribed incorrectly, then patients can be put at risk for bacterial infections, which means that more harm can be caused than good.
