Most children shouldn’t be given penicillin for sore throats

When kids have sore throats, they are often given a prescription for penicillin, one of the most widely used antibiotics. However, according to a study in the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal), that’s the wrong thing to do. Not only does it rarely help relieve symptoms, but it can put the children at risk for serious side effects and may cause an increase in antibiotic resistance.

Dutch researchers identified 156 children aged 4-15 who visited their family doctor with a severe sore throat. The children were randomly assigned to penicillin for seven days, penicillin for three days followed by placebo for four days, or placebo for seven days.

Penicillin did not reduce the duration of symptoms, nor did it affect school attendance or recurrences of sore throat.

The authors recommended that medical doctors should use penicillin to treat children with an acute sore throat only when they are severely ill or are at high risk of developing serious complications.

“In view of the extremely low incidence of potentially severe post-streptococcal sequelae such as rheumatic fever in affluent Western communities, rising antibiotic resistance rates, and the high carrier rate of group A streptococci in children, we advocate prudent prescription behaviour with respect to penicillin,” they stated.

SOURCE: “Penicillin for acute sore throat in children: randomised, double blind trial,” by Dr. Sjoerd Zwart, et. al., BMJ, December 6, 2003.