Doctors warn against taking antibiotics for viruses over bacterial resistance fears

After a bumper flu season that has seen respiratory illnesses spike around the country, more patients are expecting antibiotics for viral illnesses, but doctors and experts said that can have disastrous effects.

Telehealth service Instantscripts medical director Dr Andrew Thompson said using antibiotics for the flu or COVID-19 could harm the patient and contribute to antibiotic resistance.

"The major things we worry about is antibiotics are indiscriminate - they don't target specific bacteria.

"There's also the possibility of having a reaction; 25 per cent of cases of anaphylaxis in Australian hospitals are from allergies to antibiotics."

Historically in Australia, there had been an over-prescription of antibiotics, Dr Thompson said, which contributed strongly to antibiotic resistance.

University of Wollongong Professor Antoine M. van Oijen is a leader in the fight against antibiotic resistance and is part of a group who are tackling the problem.

Professor van Oijen said the overuse of antibiotics was leading to bacteria becoming more and more resistant as bacteria were "quite clever".

"What a lot of people aren't aware of is that it's not you that becomes resistant - it's the bacteria," Professor van Oijen said.

"They can evolve much more quickly than humans, to a point that when they are exposed to antibiotics they can make changes in their DNA."

The overuse of antibiotics all over the world, not only in the human health space, but also in agriculture, was a huge part of the problem, he said, and the effects could be catastrophic.

The O'Neill Report, a landmark study from the UK, revealed that between 500,000 and one million people die every year from complications due to microbial resistance.

By 2050, the number is predicted to jump to ten million deaths per year globally.

"That's more than people currently dying because of cardiovascular disease," Professor van Oijen said.

"When you think about not only the cost on human health, but also the cost on our health system, it's a massive problem that's only growing," he said.

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While Professor van Oijen said there was no "silver bullet" and education around bacterial resistance was vital.

As experts work to develop technology to more quickly diagnose what kind of antibiotics might have an effect on infections, individuals must also do their bit, he said.

"This is a really wicked problem that we can't solve by looking at just one sector - we have to really look at this from a multidisciplinary approach."

"We as a patient population have a role to play," he said.

Listening to doctors and not asking for antibiotics for viral infections like colds, flu and COVID-19 was advised, as well as awareness around antibiotic overuse, Professor van Oijen said.

A regulatory framework to ensure doctors prescribed antibiotics only when warranted and in the agriculture sector was also important, he said.