How is the course of antibiotics determined?

Question

Would there be different timelines or dosages of the same antibiotic for the same infection at different severities? How do doctors determine the dosage and course in the first place?

In: Biology

Answer 1

I know for at least one type of infection you can have a 3 day HIGH dose, which is bad for your liver/kidneys, or you can have a 7 day medium dose, which is proven to work better, and has lower chance of hurting your kidneys.

Same antibiotic, but different dosages/quantity needed to reach “peak dosage” in your system.

I don’t know a lot about medicine, but I do know your body does not process 100% of the drug you took.

This may not be about antibiotics, but I do know some stuff about how medicine can build up in your system in a positive way, rather than a negative way (like allergy pills build up and then don’t work as well because you become tolerant of them) Some of the medication that can build up in your system are antipsychotics, it’s common for people to miss a day of their antipsychotic and not notice the change because it’s built up in their system.

Then like the frog you wish to boil, the amount of build up slowly starts to change, and you slowly go back to where you were at before you started treatment. (For antidepressants it takes upwards of 6 months for them to kick in, so this boiling frog type of situation would last longer for someone who missed a few pills or is coming off of them, but it would probably drop off dramatically once there wasn’t enough left for it to work)

Antipsychotic/“anti-“mental health pills generally give you a smallish dose correct for your body weight/age and let you build it up in your system until you’re coasting at the correct amount of “build up/daily burn”

To circle back, with antibiotics there are different types that target different type of ailments. I’d assume with an antibiotic that targets a broad spectrum of bacteria, they would want to give you a lower dose (medium dose tbh) for a longer period of time to make sure whatever unknown bacteria that is causing your body to raise its white blood count is attacked, without giving you such a hardcore dosage that it attacks ALL bacteria to the point where you get more sick.

That fine line of killing all of the bacteria and killing enough of all the bacteria to also kill all the bad bacteria is where your questions answer is dancing.