UK doctors told to 'step in' on antibiotics use by peers

Doctors in the UK are being told to step in if they believe colleagues are prescribing antibiotics unnecessarily, to help tackle the problem of rising drug-resistant infections.

GPs should also take more time to explain to their patients the reasons why antibiotics might not be the best option for them, the proposed measures from the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence say.

The draft guidance aims to ensure that antimicrobial medicines such as antibiotics continue to be effective in treating infections as the more they are used, the more resistant they become.

In December, a report said that unless action is taken, resistant bugs could be claiming at least an extra 10 million lives a year by 2050 – more than the number of people who currently die from cancer.

“The more we use antibiotics, the less effective they become as diseases evolve and become resistant to existing antimicrobial medicines,” Alastair Hay, professor of primary care and chairman of the committee which developed the guidelines, said.

“Resistance to all antimicrobials is increasing and, combined with a lack of new antimicrobial medicines, there is a heightened risk in the future that we may not be able to treat infections effectively.”

Antimicrobial medicines have been the mainstay of treating infections for more than 60 years, but very few new antibiotics have been developed over the past 30, meaning existing antibiotics are being used to treat an ever greater variety of infections and infectious diseases.

Nice said the draft guidelines were “intended to help health and social care commissioners, providers and prescribers promote and monitor the sensible use of antimicrobials to preserve their future effectiveness”.

The proposed measures also recommend setting up “multidisciplinary antimicrobial stewardship teams” to review prescribing and resistance data.