Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are the second most common type of infection with over 8 million visits to health care providers each year. Women are affected more often than men,…
Antibiotic resistance is a topic I like to follow because it has been implicated as a public health issue that could have catastrophic results. When bacteria are resistant to antibiotics,…
This past winter I noticed a lot of people were sick with a cold, flu, or cough (or a combination). Unfortunately, what ends up happening is that a lot of…
In the 1950s began the widespread use of low-dose antibiotics as growth promoters in the agricultural industry. The discovery was much by accident, but ended up quite profitable: Farmers gave…
In 2005 the FDA banned the use of a particular broad-spectrum (meaning effective against a broad range of microbes) antibiotic class—the fluoroquinolones—due to an alarming increase in the rate of…
In pediatric medicine, antibiotics are among the most commonly prescribed medications, with more than 30 million prescriptions written each year. A recent study analyzed antibiotic prescribing patterns in outpatient visits…
Antibiotics are overused for conditions they do not treat, such as viral infections like cold or flu. Antibiotic overuse is leading to antibiotic resistance, one of the major challenges…
Over-prescription of antibiotics contributes to antibiotic resistance and affects the ability of bacteria to survive antibiotic treatment. That’s very important because if antibiotics do not work for infections, there isn’t…