Antibiotic Rx Rose Prior to Cardiopulmonary Disease Diagnosis

Patients with newly diagnosed comorbidities, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), heart failure, or asthma, had an increase in rates of antibiotic prescribing in the months prior to their diagnosis, U.K. researchers found.

In the 1 to 3 months prior to diagnosis, rates of antibiotic prescribing increased at least two-fold for both COPD and heart failure, and were up 88% for asthma, reported Laura Shallcross, PhD, of University College London, and colleagues in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

They noted that patients with comorbidities are at higher risk of developing antibiotic resistance compared with healthy patients because of “their increased vulnerability to infection, frequent antibiotic exposure, and contact with secondary care where drug-resistant infections are prevalent.” Notably, diabetes, chronic lung, kidney, or vascular disease may increase a patient’s susceptibility to bacterial infection or increase their risk of infection-related adverse outcomes, they said.

Maksym Kozlenko [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons