Consequences of simultaneous usage of antibiotics and alcohol

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We all know that such things as antibiotics and alcohol should not be taken together, as it can cause serious problems. Still, if a person chooses not to follow this rule, he should know about all the possible consequences, which can occur in the result. The range of such consequences is really great: beginning from development of various illness and up to the death. According to statistic data, 25% of cases for emergency room visiting are connected with alcohol usage together with the course of antibiotics.

Alcohol-antibiotics incidents

Unfortunately, there are a lot of alcohol-antibiotics incidents today, notwithstanding the fact that many people know about consequences of their simultaneous usage. Just in the United States more than 2,800 prescriptions are nowadays available, besides over 14 billion are annually prescribed.

The problem is complicated by the existence of the so called over-the-counter medical drugs. According to statistics, about 70 per cent of adult population from time to time uses alcohol, while 10 per cent of population drinks alcohol every day. With such as situation, we practically cannot avoid occurrence of alcohol-antibiotics incidents.

The group of risk first of all includes people at the age of 65 and older. Notwithstanding the fact that this group takes only 12 % of the whole population, they are more often prescribed different medical drugs, than all the other, that is why, they are more likely to take medicines together with alcohol.

This data puts these people in the group of alcohol-antibiotics incidents risk, resulting in various adverse consequences, appearing in the result of such misuse. Studies show, that people at the age of 65 and older have side effects, caused by the usage of alcohol together with medicines, more often than other groups of population. Besides, the older the person is, the more severe the complications are.

Alcohol-antibiotics interactions

If we want to know about possible alcohol-antibiotics interactions, it is necessary first to know about how alcohol and antibiotics act in our organisms.

To reach its aim, an antibiotic should go through blood, making appropriate changes in the human organism, and then it is removed from the organism. The problem is that alcohol acts practically the same. It goes through the blood, influences our brain, causes intoxication and then our liver removes it from the organism. With such similar acting alcohol-antibiotics interactions can cause a lot of problem.

Main interactions of alcohol and medications include:

- Alcohol dose competing with that of antibiotics, causing side effects;

- Decrease of antibiotic effect doe to long-term alcohol usage;

- Turning of medications into toxic chemicals due to chronic consumption of alcohol;

- Bad effect from antibiotics to chronic drinkers. That is why the majority of chronic alcohol drinkers need a greater dose of medications than the other people do.