Doctors today presented more evidence that it’s time for long-time antibiotic stalwarts like penicillin and amoxicillin to step aside when it comes to the treatment of strep throat.
The most common medications used to treat the strep germ, the bug that causes millions of sore throats in U.S. children every year, simply aren’t doing the job and aren’t as effective as newer antibiotics known as cephalosporins. In results presented today at a large infectious disease meeting, the annual Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in Washington, doctors who reviewed the treatment given to 11,426 children showed that even a short course of the newer drugs is more effective than the traditional 10-day dose of the older antibiotics.
