Many cases are viral and cannot be treated by antibiotics. According to the Infectious Disease Society of America's guidelines, the duration of treatment for bacterial infections should be 5 to 10 days. A meta-analysis completed in Britain determined that a 5-day course is as effective as a 10-day course.
The standard practice is to give antibiotics for 10 days. A recent clinical trial tried stopping antibiotics after 5 days, and found it less effective than the standard 10 days. They also observed no difference in drug resistance among harmless bacteria residing in the throat.
The evidence supporting shorter courses is especially strong for community-acquired pneumonia. At least 12 randomized controlled trials in adults have shown that three to five days of antibiotics works as well as five to 14 days, and a 2021 study found the same holds true for children.
A growing body of research finds that telling patients to finish a full course of antibiotics even if they're already feeling better not only fails to prevent drug-resistant “superbugs” from forming, but also might make those pathogens stronger.
Researchers from the CDC point out that, when antibiotics are deemed necessary for the treatment of acute bacterial sinusitis, the Infectious Diseases Society of America evidence-based clinical practice guidelines recommend 5 to 7 days of therapy for patients with a low risk of antibiotic resistance who have a ...
Seven days of antibiotic treatment is sufficient for patients with uncomplicated gram-negative bacteremia, according to the results of a new study published online December 11 in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
It can be reasonably assumed, therefore, that stopping an antibiotic after a few days of treatment will be no more likely to contribute to antibiotic resistance than taking the full course.
It has been widely accepted that stopping antibiotic treatment early encourages bacteria to develop antibiotic resistance. As a result, current medical advice is to finish taking a prescribed course of antibiotics as recommended by a healthcare professional, even if you start to feel better.
So why is it that your doctor recommends finishing your course of antibiotics? It's because taking them regularly until the prescription is complete helps ensure that all of the illness-causing bacteria are killed or prevented from multiplying.
Antibiotics should be limited to an average of less than nine daily doses a year per person in a bid to prevent the rise of untreatable superbugs, global health experts have warned.
Simply put, 7 – 10 days is the “Goldilocks number”: It's not so brief a span that the bacterial infection will shake it off, but it's also not long enough to cause an adverse reaction.
Typically, it will take the body time to balance the microbiome to healthy, diverse bacteria levels. In fact, research shows that it takes about 6 months to recover from the damage done by antibiotics. And even then, the body might not even be back to its pre-antibiotic state.