Systemic antibiotic prescribing to paediatric outpatients in 5 European countries: a population-based cohort study

BMC Pediatrics

Research Article

Sinna Pilgaard Ulrichsen¹  Miriam C Sturkenboom²  Alessandro Oteri²  Gianluca Trifirò³  Elisabetta Poluzzi⁴  Aurora Puccini⁴  Mariam Molokhia⁵  Giampiero Mazzaglia⁶  Francesco Innocenti⁷  Tania Schink⁸  Edeltraut Garbe⁸  Jakob Holstiege⁸  Irene Bezemer⁹ 

[1] Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Aarhus University Hospital, Olof Palmes Allé 43-45, Aarhus, Denmark;Department of Medical Informatics, Erasmus University Medical Center, Dr. Molewaterplein, 50 3015, GE Rotterdam, The Netherlands;Department of Medical Informatics, Erasmus University Medical Center, Dr. Molewaterplein, 50 3015, GE Rotterdam, The Netherlands;Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine and Pharmacology, University of Messina, Messina, Italy;Department of Pharmacology, University of Bologna, Via Irnerio, 48, 40126, Bologna, Italy;Department of Primary Care and Public Health Sciences, NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and King's College London, Room 713, 7th Floor, Capital House Weston St, SE1 3QD, London, UK;Health search, Italian College of General Practitioners, Via Sestese, 61, 50141, Florence, Italy;Health search, Italian College of General Practitioners, Via Sestese, 61, 50141, Florence, Italy;Agenzia regionale di sanità della Toscana, Via Dazzi, 1, 50141, Florence, Italy;Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology, BIPS, Achterstr. 30, 28359, Bremen, Germany;The PHARMO Institute, Van Deventerlaan 30-40, 3528, AE Utrecht, The Netherlands;

关键词: Drug utilisation study;    Antibiotic resistance;    Paediatric;    Prescription rate;    Cephalosporins;    Macrolides;    Penicillins;    Electronic healthcare database;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2431-14-174

 received in 2014-02-18, accepted in 2014-06-30,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundTo describe the utilisation of antibiotics in children and adolescents across 5 European countries based on the same drug utilisation measures and age groups. Special attention was given to age-group-specific distributions of antibiotic subgroups, since comparison in this regard between countries is lacking so far.MethodsOutpatient paediatric prescriptions of systemic antibiotics during the years 2005-2008 were analysed using health care databases from the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy and Germany. Annual antibiotic prescription rates per 1,000 person years were estimated for each database and stratified by age (≤4, 5-9, 10-14, 15-18 years). Age-group-specific distributions of antibiotic subgroups were calculated for 2008.ResultsWith 957 prescriptions per 1000 person years, the highest annual prescription rate in the year 2008 was found in the Italian region Emilia Romagna followed by Germany (561), the UK (555), Denmark (481) and the Netherlands (294). Seasonal peaks during winter months were most pronounced in countries with high utilisation. Age-group-specific use varied substantially between countries with regard to total prescribing and distributions of antibiotic subgroups. However, prescription rates were highest among children in the age group ≤4 years in all countries, predominantly due to high use of broad spectrum penicillins.ConclusionsStrong increases of antibiotic prescriptions in winter months in high utilising countries most likely result from frequent antibiotic treatment of mostly viral infections. This and strong variations of overall and age-group-specific distributions of antibiotic subgroups across countries, suggests that antibiotics are inappropriately used to a large extent.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Holstiege et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.