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About the antibiotic prescription

The study was carried out in different states such as In New Jersey and New York. The researchers used health records that belonged to 222 doctors working at 25 offices from southeastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey in 2009 to compare how different races were diagnosed, treated and given medication in different states.

They acquired information on about 1.3 million office visits by around 209,000 kids all under 18 years old.

The researchers focused on acute problems like; ailments that are related to lung, sinus and ear infections. The researchers assumed that the case could be slightly different in routine care and other checkups. The entire survey comprised of about363, 000 independent cases.

Findings of the research study

Gerber and his colleagues found out that non black children were taken to the hospital twice a year compared to the once a year rate in black children who were taken to the same doctor with an acute medical problem.

The researchers then adjusted the data for several factors and variables such as the age of the child, the status of medical insurance and the gender of the child. The results after this adjustment showed that black children were ‘less likely to receive antibiotic prescription from the same doctor.’ 29 percent of non black kids were prescribed antibiotics compared to 24 percent prescribed to black children.

Dr. Adam Hersh after studying the report said that, the differences in giving out prescriptions to different patients occurred at the level of the individual doctor. The researchers found out that the doctors in the study conducted, diagnosed black children with other conditions that would not warrant a typical antibiotic prescription. For example 4 percent of non black kids were diagnosed with tonsillitis compared to the 2 percent in black kids. As much people would want to have assumptions based on these findings there is no specific reason why number of cases of black children diagnosed with cases of tonsillitis in the study is lower than that for non black children, according to the researchers.

Dr. Hersh adds that it is likely that some kids are over-treated and in some cases it may due to variation in family preferences to the use of antibiotics and other classes of drugs.

The researchers suggest that further research should be carried out for actual facts to be collected with regards to the reaction of black kids to antibiotics. This will assist in arriving at a more concrete answer whether their intake lead to sever medical conditions in black children. These results generalized to the entire population of the whole country because the study was carried out in two states only. Other factors like socioeconomic status of the children may also influence the final results.