That’s wrong. Stop confidently spreading harmful misinformation. I already provided citations that you should have checked before making that statement: humanmicrobiome.info/antibiotics/
Serinus@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The shortest course is bad advice. When you do take antibiotics, you don’t want to create antibiotic resistant bacteria.
That’s why they tell you to always take the full course, even if you feel better.
MaximilianKohler@lemmy.world 9 months ago
flooppoolf@lemmy.world 9 months ago
That is not a website doctors look at. Medical procedures are formed and approved through NIH articles with vast testing pools across many geographical areas.
If you would like more info, please look up the IDSA guidelines
MaximilianKohler@lemmy.world 9 months ago
That is not a website doctors look at.
Wrong. Also irrelevant. It contains a plethora of scientific citations, which is all that matters.
Medical procedures are formed and approved through NIH articles with vast testing pools across many geographical areas.
Gibberish that tells me you don’t know what you’re talking about, but want to sound authoritative.
flooppoolf@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I’m letting you know that those links are all to small journals. Good luck getting huge corporations to follow that advice versus tried and true advice. I rather a patient live than risk the infection returning and killing them.
It’s not invalid but until IDSA adopts any of that… it’s not medical advice for anyone, just research.
Serinus@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The real information is to ask your doctor and be careful with advice from social media.
MaximilianKohler@lemmy.world 9 months ago
godzillabacter@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I would like to point out, the NYT is a reputable news site but cannot even remotely be trusted with medical information/recommendations. I can’t tell you the last time I read a medical news piece from any source (and the NYT is the primary place I get my news) that I couldn’t read it and say “well that’s a gross oversimplification” or worse “this is blatantly misrepresenting the scientific author’s conclusions”. Holding up the NYT as a source of medical/scientific truth is just demonstrating how scientifically illiterate you really are.
MaximilianKohler@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Wow, projecting hard with that comment. This is a fantastic and well-cited article, and your comment does nothing to debunk anything in it, and you end with a baseless “you’re scientifically illiterate” comment. Amazing.
godzillabacter@lemmy.world 9 months ago
tl;dr - Asking your doctor for the shortest reasonable course is a good thing that will both protect you as a patient as well as minimize your risk of antimicrobial resistance. But the key phrase is ask your doctor, do not take it upon yourself to decide when to stop them. Take whatever course you’re prescribed.
Pharmacist and 4th year medical student with a passion for antimicrobial stewardship and infectious disease.
Historical treatment duration for most infections was truly quite arbitrary. Evidence for most infections, when it is actually tested, have pretty consistently demonstrated shorter treatment durations than were classically taught (10-14 days for pneumonia now generally 5-7, 14 days for Gram Negative Bacteremia now 7, etc). There is a subset of infectious disease doctors that are bucking the trend of historical “you have to complete your course advice” for some infections. In general, what I have seen is recommendations to discontinue antibiotics with significant clinical improvement AND a non-life-threatening infection in a non-sterile body cavity. So nobody is shortening course durations for empyemas or endocarditis.
The issue becomes expecting patients to know what constitutes clinically meaningful recovery and whether or not their infection is one of the “safe” ones to stop antibiotics earlier.
At the end of the day, I totally disagree with your premise, as we should always strive for the minimum safe antimicrobial exposure. However I do agree that telling patients “shorter is better” is bad advice because I don’t want laypeople making these decisions when usually no-ID physicians don’t make them.
flooppoolf@lemmy.world 9 months ago
NYT undoing years of “finish your fucking course”
godzillabacter@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Yup, it’s hard to have a good discussion about the changing tides in ID without feeling like you’re causing a bunch of backsliding and non-compliance. I think being honest with people that the data is generally poor about how we select durations is the moral thing to do. But I do want you to just take your damn antibiotics as prescribed instead of going rouge because you heard “shorter is better” and your pneumonia recurring.
MaximilianKohler@lemmy.world 9 months ago
WITH CITATIONS.
“finish your fucking course” is wrong, and pigheaded people like you that refuse to review scientific evidence and reshape your opinions accordingly do a lot of harm and make it impossible for the scientific method to work and for the scientific community to update the public when the evidence changes.
flooppoolf@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Look man, I gave the link a good and thorough read. Leave the hate at the door. I already said it’s good research, it’s just kind of all over the place.
What that link is saying is already in practice. If it’s a viral infection you won’t get antibiotics, if it’s a clean procedure you probably won’t get antibiotics for more than a day.
That’s already in practice. Because studies show antibiotics are probably not the most important in those select very few cases. Those are good practice methods and are part of IDSA guidelines.
What is not in practice, and what I feel is the main point of confusion here, is that everyone should take shorter courses.
Nope absolutely not. If your doctor says take it for x days then you do it because they already went through the protocol and have deemed X days to be the best course of action. Your doctors will let you know if you are a prime candidate for a shorter duration of therapy, they’ll do all the research for you because they will not risk your death by having your disease state possibly recur and in a more aggressive manner.
Telling everyone that everything should be shorter will only confuse patients. I promise that if you are a prime candidate for a shorter duration, your doctor will know, and will give you the appropriate course of treatment.
Another thing is this quote from the link you provided
“Antifungals also do collateral damage: Disruption of Intestinal Fungi Leads to Increased Severity of Inflammatory Disease …cornell.edu/…/disruption-of-intestinal-fungi-lea…. Immunological Consequences of Intestinal Fungal Dysbiosis (2016).
Long-term impact of oral vancomycin, ciprofloxacin and metronidazole on the gut microbiota in healthy humans (Nov 2018)”
It goes on to mention antifungals and then talks about different drugs not related to antifungals but that are instead used as additional therapy for when the exact cause is unknown. I was thinking it would mention AmphotericinB, Voriconazole, Itraconazole, Micafungin etc.
It just seems to be all over the place and is not a great source to base medical decisions off of. I’m sorry.