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Antibiotics Are Useless In Treating Most Sinus Infections
An anonymous reader writes "While doctors routinely prescribe antibiotics to treat sinus infections, researchers on Tuesday revealed that amoxicillin, the most commonly prescribed medication for nasal cavity inflammation and sinuses, was just as effective as a dummy pill. Researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, found that there was no significant difference in symptoms between patients taking amoxicillin to those who took the placebo three days after starting the pills were administered."
Each group started on their pills and they checked for effect 3 days later.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
A) Someone's got a sense of humor: "The primary outcome was measured using the modified Sinonasal Outcome Test-16 (SNOT-16), a validated and responsive measure."
B) They did no testing whatsoever to ensure the sinus infections _were_ bacterial - but they apparently usually are, and are usually diagnosed as such symptomatically instead of by culture (in other words, they followed normal practices in deciding who to give antibiotics to).
C) They did no testing to see if resistant bacteria could be isolated from any patients.
Putting B and C together...clearly the medical community is overprescribing antibiotics, but there may be some question of whether it's resistant bacterial infections or poor diagnosis of bacterial vs. viral infections.
My thought exactly. Clindamycin and Biaxin are especially good at treating sinus infections. Why they used a drug like amoxicillin is beyond me...
Certainly. In addition to research performed by my own research group, the "Big Daddy" of biofilm research is Bill Costerton. His group puts out oodles of papers on the subject. This was merely the first that popped up in a Google Scholar search, though it is one that we have referenced for our own publications: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673601053211
That is why you combine the treatment with antibiotics. Planktonic bacteria are highly susceptible to all manner of natural and artificial defenses. If the area has the release enzyme in place, then they won't settle on a surface and start growing. The body can deal with individual bacteria in the bloodstream pretty easily. It's likely clots of biofilm that cause problems.
No. Results are usually seen within 24 hours and if there is no improvement after 48 hours the treatment can be considered ineffective. How do I know? I'm a doctor.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.