EDITOR’S NOTE: In her column Beyond Rx, Andrea Wong, a 4th year Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) candidate from the University of Waterloo, and a very new member to the Manitoulin community, will be exploring topics on health and wellness, medical advances, and everything in between in the pages of this newspaper
No bug, no drug
by Andrea Wong
So a couple weeks ago I came down with a really bad sore throat. After a week of a painful scratchy throat, sleepless nights and intense nausea, I decided that enough is enough and I was fed up with being sick. I was pretty convinced that this was strep throat and wanted antibiotics. However, a little voice in my head decided to pipe up. Was it really as bad as my last episode of strep throat or was I just grasping at anything that had the possibility of getting rid of this really annoying problem?
As a pharmacist, 99.9 percent of my job is making sure medications are being used appropriately (the last 0.1 percent is spent on hold trying to deal with drug insurance companies…). One of the most important medications I need to make sure are used appropriately are antibiotics, which are used to treat infections.
Infections are interesting in that not every infection requires an antibiotic. Antibiotics are only useful in bacterial and not viral infections. A lot of the common infections such as the common cold, flu, sore throats, sinus infections, ear infections, and coughs are caused by viruses. These conditions may be annoying and may take a while to go away, however they will eventually go away on their own. Using antibiotics in these conditions will not help relieve your symptoms and may actually put you at risk of problems such as nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Antibiotics also kills off your good gut flora so that you are more at risk of getting a potentially deadly bowel infection called Clostridium difficile.
A problem with using antibiotics in everyone with an infection “just in case it is bacterial” is that it puts you at develop drug resistant bugs so if you were to get another infection, you may need a different antibiotic that may not work as well to treat it. These resistant bugs can spread to people are already vulnerable. It is our young kids, our elderly parents, and our friends, family, and neighbours that have multiple illnesses and are the sickest. The combination of the increase in medication resistance and the limited number of antibiotics we have require us to be more careful with how we use them.
Antibiotics are used to kill the bacteria to treat the underlying infection. It should not be used for pain. It should not be used to help with just a fever. It should not be taken on an “as needed” basis. Your antibiotic is prescribed for a set number of days to ensure that it will kill off the bacteria causing the infection. It is crucial to finish the whole course of treatment or else there is a chance the infection will come back and will be resistant to the same drug and you will need to start from scratch with another antibiotic. If you are using your antibiotics properly, you should not have any leftover pills after your treatment. Leftover liquid antibiotics should also be brought back to the pharmacy for proper disposal.
The throat swab I did came back negative for bacteria and my throat started getting better a day or two afterwards. Thankfully, I had ended up not taking any of the antibiotics and this whole incident was a good reminder for me to practice what I preach. I am glad my cold is over and the whole antibiotics issue can be postponed to the next time I get sick again.
