Self-Medication Dangers: Patients Who Take Antibiotics Without Consulting Their Doctor Risk To Become Antibiotic Resistant

A study on the use of antibiotics by patients has shown that there some people who would use antibiotics even if they have not consulted with their doctor for its use. Out of 400 patients in Houston, 25 percent that they would take antibiotics without speaking to their doctor about it.

According to Live Science, the patients in the antibiotics study were from Houston and were going to family practice clinics. Among the 400 patients, five percent said that they had taken antibiotics even without a doctor's prescription in the past year while 14 percent said they stored antibiotics at home.

Too Many People 'Self-Prescribe' Antibiotics, Experts Say https://t.co/91uE21KhZg

— Live Science (@LiveScience) July 11, 2016

Patients Who Would Self-Prescribed Antibiotics From Poor Bracket

Researchers found that 60 percent of the patients who said that they would take antibiotics without a doctor's prescription were those that went to public clinics for underserved minority patients, as per EurekAlert. Also, 44 percent of these patients who would consider self-prescription of antibiotics said that they had annual incomes of less than $20,000.

"Patients from public primary care clinics, those with less education, and younger patients had a higher risk of [non prescription] use in our survey," the researchers were quoted as saying. The antibiotics study was published in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

The Threat Of Antibiotic Resistance

Kaiser Health News reported that antibiotic resistance, the term used when bacteria adapts to medicine, is a global threat and that this can happen when antibiotics are misused. Misuse of antibiotics may reportedly occur when patients do not take a full course of the antibiotics as prescribed by a doctor.

"We really need to educate the public it is risky to take antibiotics without contacting a doctor," study co-author Larissa Grigoryan was quoted as saying. Grigoryan is an instructor at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.