Patients Encouraged To Take Full Course Of Antibiotics

Patients are being encouraged to take antibiotics for the prescribed period and to ensure that they finish the course.

The appeal comes from winner of the Best Overall Oral Presentation Award at the 2020 National Health Research Conference, Kevhvan Graham.

Speaking at a JIS ‘Think Tank’ on February 9, where he outlined findings of his award-winning research, he emphasised that completing the medication is very important, because this will limit the chances of bacteria becoming resistant to that antibiotic drug.

He explained his rationale for doing the study, which, he said, is very timely and important given the forecast for antibiotic resistance.

“It is projected that by 2050, deaths by antibiotic-resistant bacteria will climb tremendously, so as scientists, we want to find novel compounds to limit and suppress this prevalence of morbidity,” he said.

Mr. Graham, who is a Master of Philosophy Candidate in the Department of Microbiology, University of the West Indies (UWI), noted that antibiotic resistance is a growing concern in Jamaica and internationally.

“It all starts because patients are not taking their antibiotics on time; they are skipping them; they are sharing them; they are not completing the full treatment and in some cases, healthcare professionals are prescribing antibiotics for less severe infections,” he explained.

This, Mr. Graham said, increases the prevalence of antibiotic resistance in bacteria.

“Let’s say you’ve been given an antibiotic course for seven days and you only take it for three days – because you missed dosages, you’re giving the bacteria time to outsmart the drug and that is what is called antibiotic resistance,” he said, pointing out that the bacteria would have found a molecular mechanism to avoid being killed.

His advice for healthcare professionals is that the infection may not be severe enough to warrant antibiotic treatment, and implored them to properly examine patients and ensure that they give antibiotic treatment to the most severe infections.

Mr. Graham said that antibiotic resistance mostly affects patients with compromised immune systems and persons with chronic infections, such as diabetes and cancer.

He identified bacteria, such as salmonella, which is popular in food spoilage, and ecoli, popular in urinary tract infections, as being among the ones that will affect patients.

The research, which was undertaken by Mr. Graham with corresponding author Dr. Sherline Brown, aimed to isolate novel antibiotic compounds from a popular soil bacteria present in Jamaica, to analyse their putative antibiotic-producing ability by screening against pathogenic bacteria, with the aim of identifying novel compounds.

He explained that many of the antibiotics that are currently used in clinics and hospitals have been found in a popular soil bacterium called the actinobacteria, which are among the most pharmaceutically valuable groups of bacteria known to scientists.