Pneumonia is an infection of the air sacs and surrounding lung tissue. Pneumonia is the sixth leading cause of death overall and the primary cause of death from infectious disease in the United States, claiming the lives of about 65,000 Americans each year. Most people who die of pneumonia are over the age of 65, and often they have had underlying disorders that increased their susceptibility to infection. Others at high risk for pneumonia include people with lung cancer or a suppressed immune system (for example, people with HIV or those who take immunosuppressive medications).
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If you should come down with pneumonia, don’t be surprised if your doctor gives you very few antibiotic pills. A new study reported in the British Medical Journal (Volume 332, page 1355) finds that, for moderate to severe pneumonia caught outside the hospital, three days of antibiotics is as effective as eight days.
Because there has been no evidence that a shorter course of antibiotic treatment is effective, it has been accepted practice to continue treatment for days after pneumonia symptoms have improved. To test the question, the researchers studied 119 hospitalized adults with mild to moderately severe community-acquired pneumonia who had improved substantially after three days’ treatment with intravenous antibiotics. They were assigned at random to continue taking an antibiotic (oral amoxicillin) three times a day for five days or to take a placebo on the same schedule.
Now they know: The resolution of symptoms, x-ray results, and length of hospital stay were similar in the two groups. A shorter course of treatment would reduce antibiotic use, they pointed out, which would reduce antibiotic resistance among infectious microbes. Whenever you take an antibiotic, however, be sure that you finish all of the pills prescribed.
