JENS MANUEL KROGSTAD, Courier Staff Writer | Posted: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 12:00 am
WATERLOO - It's cold and flu season, do you know which antibiotic to use?
The answer: none.
That's because colds and flu are caused by viruses, not bacteria, rendering antibiotics useless, said Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokeswoman Jennifer Morcone.
"Antibiotics are a very powerful drug, but they lose their ability to be useful when they are overused," she said. "The best way we can keep our antibiotics powerful is to use them responsibly."
Overuse of antibiotics is not only ineffective, it can produce drug-resistant strains of bacteria, making them more difficult to treat, Morcone said. It already has caused drug-resistant strains of bacteria like salmonella and staphylococcus in the United States, she said.
The CDC began an educational campaign in 1995 to combat the over-prescribing of antibiotics, but a study released this month in The Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that doctors still are over-prescribing antibiotics.
It the Cedar Valley, though, it appears the CDC's message has gotten through.
Dr. Ronald Flory, a family practitioner at Covenant Clinic, said more of his patients than ever before know when to expect a prescription for antibiotics.
"Because there is so much information that is being stated about this, people have heard it before, and it's not foreign to them," he said. "It was tougher (a few years ago), because most people hadn't heard of it before and they thought the doctor was just being mean to them."
When Terri Brown takes her 3-year-old son, Braden, to the John Deere Medical Group's clinic, there are signs educating people about antibiotic use.
"I know at the clinic they have a big sign up so you know when to expect an antibiotic," she said.
Linda Davis said her grandson, Isaac Davis, 5, will take over-the-counter medicines for colds, because his family knows antibiotics don't work on viruses.
"But Isaac did have an ear infection recently, so he took some antibiotics for that," she said.
In addition to ear infections, Flory said other conditions that require antibiotics are strep throat and pneumonia. He said people with cold symptoms in the first five days almost always are suffering from a viral infection.
"If after five days your cold is getting worse and not better, that may be an indication that antibiotics would be useful," Flory noted.
He said people with cold symptoms after two weeks commonly are suffering from a sinus infection, though allergies could be the culprit, especially if they are in season.
Flory said another common mistake is to confuse migraines with sinus infections.
" A migraine can congest and cause runny nose and feel sinus pressure. And of course antibiotics don't do much at all for a migraine."
And of, course, follow your doctor's instructions on using antibiotics: Don't skip doses, don't save them for later and don't take someone else's.
Contact Jens Manuel Krogstad at (319) 291-1580 or jens.krogstad@wcfcourier.com.