Antibiotics have 'little effect' on cough and phlegm

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Antibiotics have 'little effect' on cough and phlegm

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Taking antibiotics for a bad cough which produces green or yellow phlegm is of little benefit.

11 September,2011 06:04 pm

A study of over 3,000 adults from across Europe found that patients producing coloured phlegm are more likely to be prescribed antibiotics by their GP.Yet the antibiotic treatment did not appear to speed up their recovery. The study appears in the European Respiratory Journal.An acute cough or a lower respiratory tract infection is a very common reason for people going to see their GP in the UK, says the study.Coughing up phlegm coloured green or yellow is also one of the most common reasons for GPs prescribing antibiotics, because they believe it is more likely to indicate a bacterial cause.The team from the School of Medicine at Cardiff University collected data from 13 European countries for their research, asking patients and doctors to record symptoms and treatments for the condition.The researchers found that patients who produced green or yellow phlegm were prescribed antibiotics considerably more often then those with clear or white phlegm.They also found that, after seven days, the biggest difference between those who were and were not treated with antibiotics was less than one half of a percentage point on a symptom severity scale.