Investigation of Amoxicillin Use in Fever Clinic Patients: Standardized Application of Antibiotics is Still Challenging

Abstract

Amoxicillin is widely used by the Chinese population and available in pharmacies without prescription. We performed a retrospective study on patients with fever who took amoxicillin before going to the fever clinic of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University from March 1, 2020 to March 31, 2021. Among the total of 9093 patients attending the fever clinic, 446 patients had a history of taking amoxicillin, from which 100 cases were randomly selected to evaluate the therapeutic effects of non-prescribed amoxicillin by changes in clinical symptoms, counts of white blood cells, neutrophils, and lymphocytes, and levels of C-reactive protein (CRP). The control group consisted of 100 randomly selected patients for who it was verified that they did not take antibiotics before attending the fever clinic. Our study showed that there were no significant differences between the group of patients taking amoxicillin and the control group in terms of symptom improvement, white blood cell, neutrophil or lymphocyte counts, or the levels of CRP. Therefore, our study indicated that although non-prescribed amoxicillin is widely used among patients with fever, it does not provide significant beneficial therapeutic effects. There is still a long way to go to standardize the application of antibiotics and popularize knowledge on proper antibiotics use among the population.

What Can We Do in the Game Between Bacterial Antibiotic Resistance and Antibiotic Application?

“…Amoxicillin is widely used by the Chinese population and can be obtained in pharmacies without a prescription. However, Yu et al 13 found that there was no significant difference in symptom improvement, leukocyte, neutrophil or lymphocyte counts or C-reactive protein levels between the patients taking amoxicillin and the controls. It shows that although over-the-counter amoxicillin is widely used in patients with fever, it does not provide significant beneficial therapeutic effects.…”