The season of influenza and acute respiratory viral infections has arrived, which means that many will traditionally begin to use antibiotics without even consulting a doctor. Is it possible to do this? Aif.ru told Chief freelance specialist in clinical microbiology and antimicrobial resistance of the Russian Ministry of Health Roman Kozlov:
Under no circumstances should you prescribe antibiotics yourself! You may not know which side effects may occur specifically for you, but they are very varied – from relatively mild ones, such as a rash, to life-threatening anaphylactic reactions. Secondly, the patient often does not take into account the drug interactions of the antibiotic with other drugs that he is taking. Well, and thirdly, self-prescription of antibiotics can lead to the development of resistance in microorganisms, which will significantly complicate the treatment of infections.
Antibiotics should only be prescribed by a doctor! And even if a specific drug once helped you, you cannot start taking it if you have similar symptoms without a prescription – the drug may not help if the infection is caused by another microorganism with a different sensitivity to antibiotics.
Our country is one of the leaders in the fight against antimicrobial resistance. The Russian Ministry of Health has created a network of reference centers for certain types of medical activities, as well as a Methodological Verification Center for Antimicrobial Resistance – a reference center for clinical pharmacology on the basis of the Smolensk State Medical University of the Russian Ministry of Health.
With the active participation of the Russian Ministry of Health, the initiative of the Interregional Association for Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (IACMAC) to create a fundamentally new specialty “Medical Microbiology” was supported. The initiative to create a unique hardware and software complex AMRHub.ru, which has no analogues in the world of digital products, was also supported.
This is a large project at the intersection of microbiology, clinical pharmacology, molecular biology and digital technologies. Its implementation was made possible thanks to the Research Institute of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy and the Interregional Association for Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. The project will help provide up-to-date information to medical workers about the current level of resistance of microorganisms to antibiotics in Russia, and develop practical recommendations for antibacterial therapy of various infections.
There are no analogues of the project in Russia. In our country, many research groups are working on the problems of antibiotic resistance. Their scientific interests cover a wide range of problems – from studying the molecular basis of antibiotic resistance, developing diagnostic tests, to the use of bacteriophages and building an optimal strategy for the use of antibiotics in a particular institution.
If we talk about world experience, then here we are ahead in our way. Multicenter studies of antibiotic resistance are conducted abroad and the results are published, but our approach, consisting of translational synthesis and presentation of information to healthcare professionals, is unique. The main achievement and reason for pride is that in fact this project has become one of the first examples of really working “digital medicine”, when medical and biological data from the primary source is accumulated, processed and synthesized into knowledge.
Source: aif.ru
