Older adults and antibiotics: Study shows healthy attitudes but unhealthy practices
Many take leftover doses from previous prescriptions, and expect new prescriptions for non-bacterial illness
2021-02-18
(Press-News.org) While most adults over 50 understand that overuse of antibiotics is a problem, and say they're cautious about taking the drugs, a sizable minority have used antibiotics for something other than their original purpose, and appear to think the drugs could help treat colds, which are caused by viruses not bacteria.
These findings, contained in a new paper in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, come from a national poll of people between the ages of 50 and 80 carried out as part of the National Poll on Healthy Aging.
The authors, from the University of Michigan's Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation, say their findings highlight the importance of careful guidance from health care providers to older adults, about the proper use and disposal of antibiotics prescribed to outpatients.
The paper expands on the findings first shared in an NPHA report in late 2019. The national poll included responses from more than 2,200 adults who were asked if they had received a prescription for an antibiotic at least once in the last two years, and also about their past practices before the two-year window.
Key data from the new paper:
More than 91% of older adults said they are cautious about using antibiotics, and nearly 89% agreed that overuse can lead to antibiotics not working the next time they're needed.
Nearly 56% agreed that doctors overprescribe antibiotics, but 41% said that if they had a cold or flu that lasted long enough to cause them to see a doctor, they would expect to receive a prescription for an antibiotic.
34% said they believe antibiotics can help them get better if they get a cold or the flu; these conditions are viral illnesses that do not respond to antibiotics, which aim to kill infectious bacteria.
Nearly 48% of older adults had received at least one prescription for antibiotics in the past two years, and half of these said at least one prescription was for a respiratory condition.
Nearly 13% of those who filled an antibiotic prescription said they had leftover medication, even though antibiotics are typically prescribed as "courses" that are intended to be taken until no medication remains. Stopping a prescription early can increase the chance that the surviving bacteria will evolve resistance to future treatment by antibiotics.
65% of those with leftover antibiotics said they kept them, and nearly 60% of these respondents said they did so in case they needed the medication in the future. This practice is not recommended; experts say individuals should seek medical attention for new signs of infection, and obtain a new prescription if antibiotics are warranted.
Nearly 19% of all respondents said that they had taken antibiotics without talking to a health care professional at least once in the past, and most said they had taken their own leftover antibiotics.
Among those who said they had had leftover antibiotics from a prescription in the past two years, just over 50% said they had taken the leftovers without talking to a healthcare professional.
INFORMATION:
The poll, based at IHPI, is supported by AARP and Michigan Medicine, the University of Michigan's academic medical center. The study's authors are NPHA director Preeti Malani, M.D. and associate directors Jeffrey Kullgren, M.D., M.S., M.P.H., and Erica Solway, Ph.D., M.S.W., M.P.H., as well as poll team members Matthias Kirch, M.S. and Dianne Singer, M.P.H.
Reference: Use and perceptions of antibiotics among US adults aged 50-80 years, Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/ice.2021.19
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-02-18
Cracow, 18 February 2021
Creation of matter in an interaction of two photons belongs to a class of very rare phenomena. From the data of the ATLAS experiment at the LHC, collected with the new AFP proton detectors at the highest energies available to-date, a more accurate - and more interesting - picture of the phenomena occurring during photon collisions is emerging.
If you point a glowing flashlight towards another one, you do not expect any spectacular phenomena. The photons emitted by both flashlights simply pass by each other. However, in certain collisions involving high-energy protons the situation is different. The ...
2021-02-18
Air pollution levels may have exceeded air quality standards during the development of some Marcellus Shale natural gas wells in Pennsylvania, potentially impacting more than 36,000 people in one year alone during the drilling boom, according to Penn State scientists.
"The construction and drilling of these wells are a relatively short-term thing, and assessment of the impact on air quality is something that often falls through the cracks," said Jeremy Gernand, associate professor of industrial health and safety at Penn State. "But there are thousands and thousands of wells drilled depending on the year, and we wanted to see what the impact would be if we added it all up."
More than 20,000 unconventional Marcellus Shale gas wells have been drilled ...
2021-02-18
The distribution of vegetation is routinely used to classify climate regions worldwide, yet whether these regions are relevant to other organisms is unknown. Umeå researchers have established climate regions based on vertebrate species' distributions in a new study published in eLife. They found that while high-energy climate regions are similar across vertebrate and plant groups, there are large differences in temperate and cold climates.
Climate determines how life organises across the world. Understanding which climatic conditions drive important changes in ecosystems is crucial to understanding and predicting how life functions and evolves.
Human well-being critically ...
2021-02-18
Having trouble coping with COVID?
Go take a hike. Literally.
Researchers have long been aware of the positive impact of a connection with nature on psychological health and, according to a new study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, the pandemic hasn't decreased the power of nature to improve mental well-being.
"Thinking about the natural world in an interconnected and harmonious way corresponds to improved psychological health, no matter where you are," says Brian W. Haas, the lead author of the new study and an associate professor in the Behavioral and Brain Sciences Program at the University of Georgia.
Haas and his collaborators - Fumiko Hoeft, a professor of psychological sciences at UConn ...
2021-02-18
Almost 100 years ago, a revolutionary discovery was made in the field of physics: microscopic matter exhibits wave properties. Over the decades, more and more precise experiments have been used to measure the wave properties of electrons in particular. These experiments were mostly based on spectroscopic analysis of the hydrogen atom and they enabled verifying the accuracy of the quantum theory of the electron.
For heavy elementary particles - for example protons - and nuclides (atomic nuclei), it is difficult to measure their wave properties accurately. In principle, however, these properties can be seen everywhere. In molecules, the wave properties ...
2021-02-18
An international team of researchers has developed a framework for assessing brand reputation in real time and over time, and built a tool for implementing the framework. In a proof of concept demonstration looking at leading brands, the researchers found that changes in a given brand's stock shares reflected real-time changes in the brand's reputation.
"We've developed something we call the Brand Reputation Tracker that mines social media text on Twitter and uses 11 different measures to give us an in-depth understanding of how users feel about individual brands," says Bill Rand, co-lead author of the paper and an associate professor of marketing in North Carolina State University's Poole College of Management.
The Brand Reputation Tracker ...
2021-02-18
Evidence that a sense of our physical selves can develop even without the sense of touch has been uncovered in a new study by researchers in the UK and the United States.
The research shows that if someone loses their sense of touch and 'proprioception' - their sense of body position - as an adult, they may learn compensatory skills using visual cues and conscious thought, or reasoning, to move their bodies.
Someone who has never had a sense of touch or proprioception, however, can find faster, unconscious ways of processing visual cues to move and orient themselves.
A team at the University of Birmingham collaborated with researchers at Bournemouth University and the University of Chicago on the study, ...
2021-02-18
In the late 1980s and 1990s, researchers at ETH Zurich discovered the first indications that the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface had been steadily declining since the 1950s. The phenomenon was known as "global dimming". However, a reversal in this trend became discernible in the late 1980s. The atmosphere brightened again at many locations and surface solar radiation increased.
"In previous studies, we showed that the amount of sunlight that reaches the Earth's surface is not constant over many decades but instead varies substantially - a phenomenon known as global dimming and brightening," ...
2021-02-18
Researchers from Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, the state's only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, evaluated the frequency of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, on various environmental surfaces in outpatient and inpatient hematology/oncology settings located within Rutgers Cancer Institute and Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, an RWJBarnabas Health facility. The study revealed extremely low detection of SARS-CoV-2 on environmental surfaces across multiple outpatient and inpatient oncology areas, including an active COVID-19 floor. Andrew M. Evens, DO, MSc, FACP, associate director for clinical services and director of the Lymphoma Program at Rutgers Cancer Institute and medical director of the oncology service ...
2021-02-18
Annapolis, MD; February 17, 2021--When the invasive spotted lanternfly arrived in the United States in 2014, it was immediately recognized for the threat it posed to native plants and crops. A community of researchers and experts in science, agriculture, and government sprang into action to respond, improving our chances for containing the pest and curbing its potential for damage.
While the effort continues, a new collection curated by the Entomological Society of America's family of journals showcases the growing body of research that is helping us understand the spotted lanternfly's biology and how to contain it. The collection features 25 articles published ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Older adults and antibiotics: Study shows healthy attitudes but unhealthy practices
Many take leftover doses from previous prescriptions, and expect new prescriptions for non-bacterial illness
