Should You Finish Your Antibiotics Course?

From strep throat to UTIs, antibiotics are the go-to medication for a host of viral infections. Until now, widespread advice has generally been that patients should always complete an entire course of antibiotics, regardless of whether symptoms clear up within a few days. But according to some NHS infection experts, it could be time to reconsider.  

They argue that there simply isn’t enough evidence to support the idea that stopping courses early encourages antibiotic resistance. Instead, they stress that more studies need to be conducted in order to determine whether stopping courses early could help cut antibiotic use.

An avant-garde approach to antibiotics

Penned by a team of British researchers, the opinion piece argues that reducing antibiotic consumption is an important part of combating antibiotic resistance. It was led by Professor Martin Llewelyn from the Brighton and Sussex Medical School, who suggests that traditional prescriptions for antibiotics are based on the outdated idea that resistance develops when drugs aren’t given a chance to build up, and infections are undertreated. Instead, he claims that growing evidence supports the idea that short courses of antibiotics lasting just three to five days could be just as effective.

RCGP advocates for ‘clear message’

The study was quick to garner attention from the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP), with leader Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard saying that while it’s important to take new evidence into account, the college "cannot advocate widespread behaviour change on the results of just one study."

Instead, she stresses that "it's important that patients have clear messages and the mantra to always take the full course of antibiotics is well known – changing this will simply confuse people.”

New study sparks medical debate

Kieran Hand, spokesman for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society also chimed, praising the opinion article as a “welcome opening of the debate in the UK on the relationship between the length of a course of antibiotics, efficacy and resistance.”

So what’s the final verdict? Until Llewelyn and his colleagues are able to offer more evidence, the idea that antibiotic courses should be completed in full will remain the norm.

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