Antibiotic Use Without a Prescription in the U.S.

Antibiotic misuse and overuse contributes substantially to the serious and growing problem of microbial antibiotic resistance. Some, if not most, of the misuse and overuse can be traced to antibiotic prescribing for conditions that do not require antibiotic treatment and do not benefit from it.

To delineate pathways by which antibiotics are taken without prescription and to identify factors that might foster the use of these pathways, investigators have conducted a scoping literature review of 31 studies reporting nonprescription use of antibiotics. The studies centered on four populations: patients or parents of patients outside healthcare settings, patients or parents of patients within healthcare settings, Hispanic/Latino persons, and inj…