Antibiotics Not the Cure for the Common Cold

You can catch a cold at any time during the year. And often, you and your family may find yourselves seeking your health care provider's help in battling the misery that the illness can cause. You may even be hoping for a miracle drug that will provide an instant cure.

It's easy to mistake antibiotics for one of these magic remedies for a cold. For a long time, these drugs have dutifully treated the conditions they were intended to be used for, like bacterial pneumonia, sinusitis and tonsillitis. Recently, it has been proved that many kinds of gastric and duodenal ulcers are caused by bacteria (Helicobacter pylori) and can be cured with antibiotics. Some forms of heart disease also may respond to antibiotics. So, it may seem that they should work for colds and the flu, as well.

But unlike bacterial infections, colds are caused by viruses, which are not affected by antibiotics. (You may have heard this distinction before.)

Cold sufferers may think the symptoms they're feeling might be a bacterial infection that antibiotics can treat -- especially if these medicines helped them recover from a previous bacterial illness.

Sometimes a cold can lead to a serious bacterial infection, but this is not common. In those few cases, antibiotics are the best thing to take. Most of the time, however, a cold passes in a week, with or without the use of antibiotics. Taking these drugs does not help you get better faster. In fact, it can create problems.

Drug allergy

You may develop an allergy to the antibiotic. About 10 percent of people who are allergic to penicillin will also be allergic to a group of antibiotics called cephalosporins. Penicillin allergies are common. If you develop a drug allergy, it can severely limit your treatment options if you get a serious infection later on; usually, you cannot take any drug that's related to the one you are allergic to.

'Friendly' bacteria

You also can kill off your body's normal flora, the "friendly" bacteria that keep other organisms under control.

With these helpful bacteria gone, harmful organisms may be able to grow unchecked, causing problems like diarrhea, thrush or yeast infections.

Super-bugs

Unnecessary or inappropriate use of antibiotics may help create "super-bugs" that are resistant to multiple antibiotics.

Each time we use antibiotics, we give germs the chance to mutate into a form resistant to the antibiotic. As germs become resistant, doctors are forced to use different, more potent and possibly more dangerous antibiotics. As some of the germs get exposed to and survive more powerful antibiotic therapy, they become more difficult to treat. So today, we have types of germs that cause tuberculosis, wound infections and pneumonia that are no longer sensitive to the medicines doctors usually use to fight them. Germs also can become resistant to antibiotics if a person doesn't take a prescription as directed for the entire length of treatment.

These are examples of emerging antibiotic-resistant bacteria:

• Neisseria gonorrhoeae, which causes gonorrhea

• Staphylococcus aureus, which causes abscesses, wound infections, pneumonias, meningitis

• Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which causes tuberculosis

• Enterococci species, which causes urinary tract infections, pneumonia, bacteremia, septic arthritis

• Neisseria meningitides, which causes meningitis, septicemia, purpura fulminans

• Streptococcus pneumonia, which causes pneumonia, meningitis