Prescription pattern analysis for antibiotics in working-age workers diagnosed with common cold

Abstract

Antimicrobial resistance is a major health concern. A primary cause is the inappropriate use of antimicrobials, particularly by patients with upper respiratory tract infection. However, baseline information for antibiotic use for common cold before being applied the National Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance in Japan is lacking. Here, we analyzed the inappropriate use of antibiotics in the working-age workers. We used large claims data from an annual health check-up for at least 5 consecutive years. Among 201,223 participants, we included 18,659 working-age workers who were diagnosed with common cold at a clinic/hospital. We calculated the proportion of patients with common cold who were prescribed antibiotics and analyzed predictive factors associated with antibiotics prescription. Antibiotics were prescribed to 49.2% (n = 9180) of patients diagnosed with common cold. In the logistic regression analysis, the group taking antibiotics was predominantly younger, male, without chronic diseases, and diagnosed at a small hospital/clinic (where the number of beds was 0–19). Cephems accounted for the highest proportion of prescribed antibiotics, with 40–45% of patients being prescribed antibiotics. Our data may be applied to prioritize resources such as medical staff-intervention or education of working-age people without chronic diseases who visit clinics for common cold to avoid the potential inappropriate use of antibiotics and prevent antimicrobial resistance acceleration.

Antibiotic prescriptions associated with a diagnosis of acute nasopharyngitis by general practitioners in France

“…The increase in medication prescriptions is potentially associated with an increase in healthcare associated costs as well medication associated adverse events. Comparing with existing literature: Our 16% antibiotics prescription rates in NP compare favorably with the 51% prescription rate in the United States albeit in an old study and the 28% in a newer one, or the 49% prescription rate in a more recent study in Japan [16,17,18]. Our rate is considerably higher than the 4.6% prescription rate reported in the control group of an interventional study in Spain [19].…”

Factors of geographical variability of antimicrobial use in Japan

“…Our study resulted in a higher AMU in Western Japan than that in Eastern Japan, which was described in the previous study using data before the action plan implementation. For the AMU in general, previous studies, including a systematic review, revealed that females were more likely to receive antimicrobials compared with males [28, 29,30,31], although other studies showed that males had more antibiotic prescriptions than females [32,33]. While the impact of gender on the AMU varies by situation, further investigations regarding the factors related with gender difference in the population are warranted.…”

Factors Associated with Geographical Variability of Antimicrobial Use in Japan

“…Our study resulted in a higher AMU in Western Japan than that in Eastern Japan, which was described in the previous study using data before the action plan implementation. For the AMU in general, previous studies, including a systematic review, revealed that female individuals were more likely to receive antimicrobials compared with male individuals [ 30 – 33 ], although other studies showed that male individuals had more antibiotic prescriptions than female individuals [ 34 , 35 ]. The study could not evaluate the impact of urinary tract infection, which was more frequently reported in female individuals compared to male individuals [ 36 ].…”