Antibiotics may not help you in future, says study

HYDERABAD: Soon, medicines may not help cure diseases. The shocking revelation was made by a study which claimed that doctors in India were extensively prescribing advanced, recently developed versions of antibiotics as first line of defence against common infections. The practice, it said, induces antibiotic resistance in bacteria at a faster rate, rendering medicines useless. 

The findings are based on a multi-city study conducted on 681 child patients in six hospitals as part of the Global Antimicrobial Resistance, Prescribing, and Efficacy in Neonates and Children (GARPEC) project. The study, headed by Dr Sumanth Gandra of Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy, was done by a group of medical researchers from New Delhi, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Maharashtra, London and USA. 

Third generation Cephalosporins (3GC) like Ceftriaxone were among the most-widely used antibiotics with nearly 35 per cent of all analysed prescriptions recommending them. Comparitively, only 19 per cent prescriptions recommended basic drugs like combination of Penicillin plus Enzyme-inhibitors.

3GCs are the most-recently developed class of antibiotics while Penicillin is a much older drug. International and national guidelines on antibiotic usage, like the one developed by US’ National Center for Disease Control last year, stress that 3GCs must be used only when penicillin based antibiotics like amoxicillin fail to act as the first line of defence. With such wide prevalence of 3GCs, it is not surprising that an earlier study by the CDDEP found that 84 percent of E.Coli isolates tested in India were resistant to 3GCs, much higher than other countries like 54 percent in China and 35 percent in USA. 

The study also found that 61.5 percent of the 681 patients were prescribed one or more than one antimicrobial, a much higher figure when compared to results of similar studies in UK(40.9%), USA(33%), Turkey(54.6%), Australia(46%). More than 90 per cent of the antimicrobial prescriptions in the Indian study were for antibiotics. 

“Nowadays parents, and patients in general, are highly impatient and expect results immediately and the doctors have to deliver,” says pediatrician Dr Preetham Kumar. “Prescribing drugs like amoxicillin will prove effective but it takes time. The recently developed drugs like third generation cephalosporins or carbapenems deliver results quickly, are broad-spectrum and more palatable. There should be a strict control on over-the-counter sales of antibiotics as well.”