THE ESSENTIAL
- If you have unused boxes of antibiotics left, you should take them to a pharmacist and do not use them without medical advice.
- Antibiotic treatment must be followed according to the dosage recommended by the doctor, even if the symptoms have disappeared.
“Antibiotics are not automatic”this very well-known slogan in France dates from 2002. At the time, the public authorities and the National Health Insurance Fund (CNAM) had launched information campaigns with the aim of reducing the consumption of these drugs in France.
For some diseases, antibiotics had no effect, for example for viral respiratory infections such as influenza or bronchiolitis. Among the reasons invoked in these awareness campaigns, there was also the fact that these drugs (and all the more so if they were taken without reason) might cause undesirable effects, such as nausea, diarrhea, allergic reactions.
Data from over 15,000 nurses reviewed
According to American researchers, taking antibiotics in women over 50 might have far more harmful effects. These drugs are believed to promote the development of later cognitive decline. Their work has been published in the journal PLOS ONE.
To achieve this result, the scientists studied the health data of nurses collected as part of a program over several years. The 15,129 nurses selected by the authors were on average 54.7 years old.
All participants were asked to describe the use of antibiotics they had had over several years and indicate the results they obtained on cognitive tests taken seven years later. The tests consisted of assessing thinking speed, attention, learning and memory. At the methodological level, the researchers classified the nurses according to four categories, according to their use of antibiotics: from “none” to “more than two months”.
Greater cognitive decline in women who took antibiotics
Results: Nurses who took antibiotics for at least two months performed worse on cognitive tests than those who took them for a shorter period of time or did not take them at all. Scientists have thus estimated that cognitive decline is equivalent to three or even four years of aging.
