Following Drop After COVID-19 Onset, Inappropriate Antibiotic Prescribing Is Up

Initial decrease seen in proportion with inappropriate prescription, followed by subsequent increase

By Elana Gotkine HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, May 1, 2024 (HealthDay News) — There was an initial decrease in inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions following onset of COVID-19, followed by an increase, according to a study published online April 22 in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Kao-Ping Chua, M.D., Ph.D., from the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, and colleagues conducted an interrupted time series analysis to examine changes in the appropriateness of U.S. outpatient antibiotic prescribing across all conditions and age groups after the COVID-19 outbreak in March 2020. The analyses included 37,566,581 enrollees (51 percent female).

The researchers found that in March 2020, there was a decrease in the proportion of enrollees with one or more inappropriate prescriptions (level decrease, −0.80 percentage points), followed by a subsequent increase (slope increase, 0.02 percentage points per month). The increase was partially due to a rebound in overall antibiotic dispensing and partially due to an increase in the proportion of antibiotics that were inappropriate (slope increase, 0.11 percentage points per month). The proportion of enrollees with one or more inappropriate prescriptions was equal in December 2021 and December 2019.

“Antibiotic stewardship initiatives are needed to reverse this rise, thus preventing unnecessary morbidity and morbidity associated with antibiotic-related adverse events and antimicrobial resistance,” the authors write.