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Study: Too many doctors prescribe antibiotics in error

About 7 in 10 patients who go to the doctor seeking treatment for acute bronchitis leave with a prescription for an antibiotic, concludes a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That's a problem, the authors say, because the ideal prescription rate should be 0 percent.

About 7 in 10 patients who go to the doctor seeking treatment for acute bronchitis leave with a prescription for an antibiotic, concludes a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That's a problem, the authors say, because the ideal prescription rate should be 0 percent.

That's right, a big fat zero. Zip. Nada.

More than 40 years of clinical trials have shown antibiotics do not help patients with acute bronchitis. On top of that, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has emphasized this fact for the last 15 years. But it doesn't seem to have gotten through. Indeed, doctors were writing more prescriptions for the drugs in 2010 than in 1996.

Researchers in Boston identified 3,153 patients from 1996 to 2010 whose only complaint was acute bronchitis, a respiratory disease that resolves in a few weeks and that is almost always caused by a virus.

Thirty-six percent of those patients got a prescription for an extended macrolide, which includes azithromycin and erythromycin. An additional 35 percent got a perscription for a broad-spectrum antibiotic, such as fluoroquinolone. Overall, the antibiotic prescription rate was 71 percent.

The CDC and others worry the overuse of antibiotics is fueling the rise of drug-resistant tuberculosis, E. coli, and more. - L.A. Times