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VIDEO: ‘We should be using less antibiotics’ for traveler’s diarrhea
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SAN ANTONIO — In this exclusive video from the American College of Gastroenterology Annual Meeting, Mark S. Riddle, MD, of the University of Nevada Reno School of Medicine, discusses his presentation on the effects of single-dose antibiotics on the microbiome in traveler’s diarrhea.
“Over the last few years we’ve learned that people who travel overseas, who go to Africa or Asia or somewhere, they come back with multi-drug resistant organisms in their intestines,” Riddle told Healio Gastroenterology and Liver Disease. “One of the things about traveler’s diarrhea is we have such good treatments, especially with antibiotics, that resolve symptoms rapidly.”
However, Riddle said people are mostly using multiday, multidose regimens to treat traveler’s diarrhea. The study that Riddle and colleagues completed focused on three single-dose regimens and how they impacted the functional microbiome.
Riddle said they did not find any significant disturbances and patients developed less resistance than observed in other studies of patients treated for traveler’s diarrhea.
“We think that these data suggest that, like with anything, it’s the dose that makes the poison,” Riddle said. “We should be using less antibiotics in situations where they are as effective but would not induce changed in the microbiome that are unhealthy.”
Reference:
Riddle MS, et al. Abstract 7. Presented at: American College of Gastroenterology Annual Meeting; Oct. 25-30, 2019; San Antonio.
Disclosures: Riddle reports no relevant financial disclosures.