THURSDAY, Sept. 17 (HealthDay News) -- Easy access to antibiotics without a prescription via the Internet encourages patients to self-medicate and compromises the quality of their care, according to a study in the September/October issue of the Annals of Family Medicine.
Arch G. Mainous III, Ph.D., and colleagues at the University of South Carolina in Charleston, used Google and Yahoo to conduct an Internet search using the key words "purchase antibiotics without a prescription" and "online (English only)," to find online vendors. They then compared them according to what antibiotics they were selling, as well as quantity, shipping times and locations.
There were 138 different vendors who met the search criteria, of which 36.2 percent did not require a prescription to dispense antibiotics, while 63.8 percent issued a prescription online, the researchers discovered. All but 1.4 percent of the vendors shipped to the United States, with a mean eight-day delivery time. The most widely available antibiotics were macrolides, offered by 96.4 percent of vendors, followed by penicillin offered by 94.2 percent, fluoroquinolones on 61.6 percent of the sites, and cephalosporins offered by 56.5 percent of sites, the study revealed.
"The medical community and the public health and regulating agencies, as well as pharmaceutical companies, need to expand efforts to control antibiotic resistance beyond initiatives centered on prescribing behavior to include self-medication and sources of antibiotics obtained without prescription," the authors write.
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