AIBU to B amazed at how many people still don't seem to have a clue about antibiotics?

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Talking a work colleague the other day... I happened to mention that I have a heavy cold/sore throat. He said "Oh, I have some antibiotics if you want them". Turned out he'd been prescribed them for something a few months ago, took them for a few days, felt better, stopped taking them and kept them in case he needed them for something else.

I pointed out that you're meant to finish the whole course, you can't just keep some for later; you also can't really just give prescription medicine to other people, and anyway it was unlikely that they'd work on a cold.

Several other colleagues were there. One agreed with me, one basically seemed to be hearing this for the first time, and the other two thought there was nothing wrong with what he was doing and "they're way too fussy about antibiotics now, they used to hand them out all the time and it was fine".

AIBU to be quite shocked that so many people (all well-educated, all have lived here for years ago so shouldn't have missed the campaigns) were blatantly not that fussed about casually taking antibiotics? I'm religious about finishing the course, not taking them unless I need to etc, and I assumed most people were too.

I get that there are bigger issues with antibiotic resistance (farming etc) but still, it's important to do what we can. And you should never hand out drugs to someone else or take them from them!

Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to humanity in modern times

This. People are obsessed with the oncoming mass extinction caused by climate change but seem to ignore this

The two issues aren't remotely comparable.

@QualCheckBot the amusing thing about your post is that as an actual doctor, it doesn’t sound like your ‘ability to understand a non rocket science simple discipline like medicine’ shows you actually understand at all.
Pathways for microbiology vary around area. But macrolides aren’t used for second line pneumonia nor for atypical types. They may be an alternative first line in penicillin resistance.

And your suggestion that it’s incredibly simple and anyone with A levels can do it is patronising and shows your own ignorance.

@Coffeeandchocolate9 amazing post! Really clear and informative.

It's a shame posters like @TheDarkPassenger still don't want to accept science to better look after themselves, but you tried! :)

BeanBag You're right, the whole human race is not likely to die out, but you'd probably be a bit annoyed if it was your child that had an infection that was resistant to ABs and died.

On the question of whole course or not the advice has become more finessed (and a little confusing). I’m addition to pp link this is a useful article www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jul/26/rule-patients-must-finish-antibiotics-course-wrong-study-says

I’ve just come back from Australia. They seem to dish out antibiotics like paracetamol there. Not sure whether it’s connected with the fact that people top up with private healthcare but my family seem to rush off to the emergency GP/ED/emergency dentist for antibiotics with fairly minor symptoms and get given them. There is no way that people should be able to self medicate with antibiotics etc, however, they should learn to look after themselves through other means, including learning that home treatment works well in most cases and over reliance on GP / formal healthcare (whether NHS or private) places unnecessary demands on services, makes it harder for people who actually do need help and potentially doesn’t help their well-being anyway.

Also, finding it slightly amusing / slightly concerning / not surprising that as a legal professional @QualCheckBot feels their knowledge of medicine is sufficient to speak as some sort of expert.

I'm astounded that people on here think it's ok to self medicate with antibiotics, ok then let's go with it for a minute, just imagine you're pregnant but don't know it yet, you get a mild infection of some sort and you manage to get your hands on some Tetracyline, the damage it can do to an embryo is shocking, I'm reading this thread open mouthed at the stupidity of some posters.

Tetracycline

‘I know if can and will cause deaths, which is obviously bad, but would it wipe out the whole species?’

If something like the bubonic plague takes hold (wiped out at least a third of the population of Europe) and we have no antibiotics that work. Extreme example I know but bacteria work very hard to adapt and mutate so you don’t really know what’s round the corner. Could also wipe out animal herds leaving food shortages.

Meh, if the health service wasn't completely shit then maybe but for a so called civilized country that kills people through negligence and neglect, I don't think it's a big deal

@onioncrumble, this is a complete non-sequitur. Quite apart from the fact that there is no health service anywhere that is immune from negligence and neglect, even if we had a completely infallible health service it wouldn't change the fact that it is dangerous to abuse antibiotics.

It drives me mad that most people seam to think they are qualified doctor . Like at work ( I work in a office ) someone has a cold for a week and someone says get to the doctors and get some antibiotics. It's a bloody cold for gods sake . Most people have 2 or 3 colds a year usually feel fine and carry on but you certainly don't need a doctors visit.

DH always tells me to take kids to gp for antibiotics when they have cough or cold - I do tell him every time that they don't work on a virus.

A friend of a friend had real problems when she was in hospital and got an infection because the antibiotics weren't working as she had taken so many different types over the years but had never completed a course. Think that's right, it was a few years ago.

I do get surprised how many people don't realise that antib's effect oral contraceptives. I worked with someone who had an unplanned pregnancy because of this.

‘I do get surprised how many people don't realise that antib's effect oral contraceptives. I worked with someone who had an unplanned pregnancy because of this.’

Not strictly true. Only enzyme inducing antibiotics (rifampin and rifabutin) affect oral contraceptives.

Also, finding it slightly amusing / slightly concerning / not surprising that as a legal professional @QualCheckBot feels their knowledge of medicine is sufficient to speak as some sort of expert

She turns up on every thread about antibiotics, spouting this nonsense about macrolides being some kind of wonder-drug solution to everything - if only doctors would understand.

She’s been told before, by multiple people, in very plain language that she is wrong. But still she posts this garbage. It is most bizarre.

Watch antibiotic resistance develop video from Harvard Medical School.
I just saw this at a lecture I attended, presented by a company working on a completely new type of antibiotic. The lecture was frightening by the way.

@Mothership4two

That's not how antibiotic resistance works. You don't build up resistance to it in your own body by not completing a course. It's the bacterial infection which builds up the resistance, so unless she was in hospital with an infection she's been fighting for years then the infection with the resistance didn't actually come from her.

She's probably infected other people throughout her life with bacteria which has been exposed to an antibiotic so she can be held party responsible, but the fact that the antibiotics didn't work on the infection when she was in hospital isn't because she's never finished a course. She was infected with an antibiotic-resistant strain. That can happen to anyone, whether or not they finish antibiotic courses.

Like I said it was a while ago, that's what I was told at the time. She got it wrong obvs

AR is a very serious issue and is a great danger to the human race. I'm getting the impression that some people think it's only the individual who becomes resistant to antibiotics when it is infact the bacteria that becomes resistant.

@42BeanBag7 @30JenniR29 for example imagine someone takes a course of antibiotics for bacterial pneumonia but starts to feel better and doesn't take the rest. If all the bacteria have not been killed off (much more likely when the course hasn't been completed), then the bacteria that still remain are more resistant to the antibiotics that were used. These can then multiply so the person then has a form of pneumonia caused by bacteria that is harder to kill off with the previous antibiotic. Pneumonia is contagious so they can easily then spread this strain of resistant bacteria onto someone else. Widespread misuse of antibiotics can cause superbugs in this way. If in this case the first person took the whole course of antibiotics and killed off all the bacteria, it would not be able to spread to other people. So it's not just the person with the infection in danger, but everyone else. That is a simplified example but you get the idea.

Hope that makes sence. The World health organisation has a page explaining the effects quite nicely.
www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/antibiotic-resistance

To me AR feels like the planet defending itself from humans. With resistant antimicrobials increasing so much of our medical management of people will become unavailable. Simple surgeries, chemotherapy or any treatment which suppresses the immune system won't be possible without effective prophylactic antibiotics. So, life expectancy will fall, children will no longer survive common childhood ailments and the earth's population will fall. Then, the planet will be able to recover.
In terms of people being able to purchase antibiotics without prescription, if you look at rates of multi drug resistant and even pan drug resistant microorganisms, they are much higher in areas where antibiotics are freely available.

DD lived with a girl from India last year who's mother sent her off to uni with a large bag stuffed with all sorts of random meds including several types of anti biotics. She then distributed them around the halls of residence to anyone who felt slightly poorly.
Shes studying business by the way, nothing in the way of medical knowledge at all.
Terrifying, and God knows how she got through customs.

@BeanBag7 @JenniR29 sorry, completely did not mean to tag you both in my previous post (looks like I messed the tags up anyway) I blame the fact I haven't woken up properly on this sleepy Sunday yet 😂

Probs not gunna change my mind tbh, bu thanks for the info. Antibiotics make me shit myself and I do prefer to let my body do the work 

Well as long as you remember than when you do have something that antibiotics just won't shift, and you're feeling like death, shitting yourself for weeks, not to complain about it because it WILL be your own fault.

@HeronLanyon the article that you posted above, is discussed in the NHS link posted earlier. That study was not thought to be very robust.
Every leaflet that comes with abx forever has stated that you must finish the course. But people choose to ignore it. There is far too much "I know best" with antibiotics. Even my DH, who is super sensible and intelligent turns into a prat when it comes to medication. Because he's not ill very often, a cold that lasts more than a couple of days becomes a "really big thing" and I have to talk him down from going to the doctors, argh!
The day will come that people die from simple throat infections, or a cut on the arm. That's where we'll end up. It's terrifying.

justinapols, didn’t access previous link I remembered this article. Also am not medic/pharm/researcher so reliant on my own gp and media reporting.

I am very surprised by some of the thinking displayed here. I thought people understood that it is the bacteria that are becoming resistant rather than the individual. Clearly the message isn't working.