EurekAlert published a press release this week that highlights the fact that for decades there has been a significant effort led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other organization to reduce inappropriate antibiotic prescribing. Despite this effort, new research from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) finds only incremental improvement in antibiotic prescribing for adults suffering from acute bronchitis and sore throat.

“We know that antibiotic prescribing, particularly to patients who are not likely to benefit from it, increases the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, a growing concern both here in the United States and around the world,” said Jeffrey A. Linder, MD, MPH, a physician and researcher in the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care at BWH and senior author of the paper. “Our research shows that while only 10 percent of adults with sore throat have strep, the only common cause of sore throat requiring antibiotics, the national antibiotic prescribing rate for adults with sore throat has remained at 60 percent. For acute bronchitis, the right antibiotic prescribing rate should be near zero percent and the national antibiotic prescribing rate was 73 percent.”

Linder and lead author, Michael L. Barnett, MD, measured changes in antibiotics prescribing for adults with sore throat and acute bronchitis using nationally representative ambulatory care surveys in the United States from 1996 to 2010. The data used represented an estimated 39 million acute bronchitis and 92 million sore throat visits by adults to primary care clinics or emergency departments across the U.S.

What researchers found was that although visits for sore throats decreased from 7.5 percent of primary care visits in 1997 to 4.3 percent of visits in 2010, the overall national antibiotic prescribing rate did not change. Physicians were prescribing antibiotics at 60 percent of visits. There was no observed change in the percentage of emergency department visits for sore throat during the time period, but the number of acute bronchitis visits increased from 1.1 million visits in 1996 to 3.4 million visits in 2010.

The collected data also showed that prescriptions for penicillin remained at nine percent while prescriptions for azithromycin, a more expensive antibiotic option, increased from being too infrequent to measure reliably in 1997 to 1998 to 15 percent of visits in 2009 to 2010.

Researchers also noted an increase in the antibiotic prescribing rate in emergency rooms, seeing an increase from 69 percent to 73 percent during the same 14-year period they observed.

“In addition to contributing to the prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacteria, unnecessary use of antibiotics also adds financial cost to the health care system and causes adverse effects for those taking the medication,” said Barnett. Most sore throats and cases of acute bronchitis should be treated with rest and fluids and do not require a visit to the doctor,” he added.

These study findings were presented at IDWeek on October 3, 2013 and the sore throat data was published online in JAMA Internal Medicine.