how does not finishing a course of antibiotics cause antibiotic resistance?
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BE AWARE – THE ANSWERS HERE ARE INCORRECT AND FOLLOW THE OLD WAY OF THINKING: The new guidelines no longer recommend to take antibiotics for completion. You may discontinue your antibiotics 24h after resolution of your symptoms.
This helps for many reasons
1) you better retain the natural diversity of bacteria instead of eliminating them all, this prevents takeover of a superbug like C. Diff
2) if some of the bacteria have antibiotics resistance, taking the medication longer will ensure only the bug with the strongest resistance will continue to survive and accelerate formation of resistance.
Professionals are realizing we have relied too heavily on antibiotics and are now urging stewardship of their use if we want to keep them as a tool in our arsenal. We have our own immune systems that should be put to use. Antibiotics can aid them but they shouldn’t do the whole job for us.
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