French researchers say that a public health campaign in France has been linked to a significant reduction of unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions, particularly in children. According to the report in the open-access journal PLoS Medicine, the number of antibiotic prescriptions per 100 inhabitants, adjusted for frequency of flu-like symptoms during the winter season, declined by more than 25 percent over 5 years. The campaign, which ran from 2002 to 2007, included educational outreach to healthcare workers, the promotion of rapid tests for diagnosis of streptococcal infections, and a public information campaign about viral respiratory infections and about antibiotic resistance, say the researchers from France’s INSERM and Institut Pasteur in Paris, France.

 

The campaign dubbed Antibiotiques c'est pas automatique (Antibiotics are not automatic) was associated with the decline, which occurred in all 22 regions of France. It also affected all classes of antibiotic except quinolones.

 

The study “provides the largest and most sophisticated analysis published thus far correlating a nationwide public campaign to decreased antibiotic use over an extended period of time,” say Swiss researchers Benedikt Huttner and Stephan Harbarth, who are not involved with the research and are affiliated with the Infection Control Program, University of Geneva Hospitals and Medical School in Geneva, Switzerland. Because reducing antibiotic use to avoid antibiotic resistance is so important, they argue, more longitudinal and modeling research to evaluate the impact of public health strategies is needed.

 

There could be other reasons for the decline, the study researchers note, including other initiatives in France and Belgium at the same time, or the introduction of a vaccine against Streptococcus pneumoniae during the study period.