ArticleInfection2015
Antibiotic use varies substantially among adults: a cross-national study from five European Countries in the ARITMO project.
Article in Infection, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 20 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 36 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- Observational study of antibiotic prescribing patterns by age and sex in primary care in England: why we need to take this variation into account to evaluate antibiotic stewardship and predict AMR variation.JAC-antimicrobial resistance · 2025Article
- One Hundred Explicit Definitions of Potentially Inappropriate Prescriptions of Antibiotics in Hospitalized Older Patients: The Results of an Expert Consensus Study.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Antimicrobial resistance prevalence in bloodstream infection in 29 European countries by age and sex: An observational study.PLoS medicine · 2024Observational
- Management of Common Infections in German Primary Care: A Cross-Sectional Survey of Knowledge and Confidence among General Practitioners and Outpatient Pediatricians.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Prevalence and Determinants of Antibiotic Consumption in the Elderly during 2006-2017.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Article
- 'Use of antipsychotics in children and adolescents: a picture from the ARITMO population-based European cohort study'.Epidemiology and psychiatric sciences · 2020Article
- Association of knowledge and beliefs with the misuse of antibiotics in parents: A study in Beirut (Lebanon).PloS one · 2020Article
- Antibiotic Consumption and Resistance during a 3-Year Period in Sicily, Southern Italy.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2019Article
- Decreasing trends, and geographical variation in outpatient antibiotic use: a population-based study in Central Denmark.BMC infectious diseases · 2019Article
- The Role of European Healthcare Databases for Post-Marketing Drug Effectiveness, Safety and Value Evaluation: Where Does Italy Stand?Drug safety · 2019Review
- Comparing outpatient oral antibiotic use in Germany and the Netherlands from 2012 to 2016.Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety · 2018Article
- Outpatient Antibiotic Prescribing for Older Adults in the United States: 2011 to 2014.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2018Article
- The hope, hype and reality of Big Data for pharmacovigilance.Therapeutic advances in drug safety · 2018Article
- Higher risk of revision for infection using systemic clindamycin prophylaxis than with cloxacillin.Acta orthopaedica · 2017Article
- Antibiotic prescribing frequency amongst patients in primary care: a cohort study using electronic health records.The Journal of antimicrobial chemotherapy · 2017Article
- Use of azithromycin and risk of ventricular arrhythmia.CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l'Association medicale canadienne · 2017Article
- Article
- Comment on: "Antibiotic use varies substantially among adults: a cross-national study from five European countries in the ARITMO project".Infection · 2016Article
- Use of antibiotics by adults: a population-based cross-sectional study.Sao Paulo medical journal = Revista paulista de medicinaArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
14 authors at 6 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeTo examine patterns of outpatient and community antibiotic use among adults in five European countries.
methodsWe used healthcare data of 28.8 million adults from six population-based ARITMO project databases to ascertain information on systemic antibiotic use in Denmark (2000-2008), the Netherlands (1999-2010), Italy (2000-2010), the UK (1996-2009), and Germany (2004-2008). We estimated overall, and age-group and sex specific antibiotic use as defined daily doses (DDD) per 1000 inhabitants per day. We computed annual age- and sex-standardized population prevalence of antibiotic use per 1000 persons-years (p-y) and the mean duration (in days) of antibiotic use.
resultsThe overall antibiotic use varied from 8.7 DDD per 1000 inhabitants per day in the UK to 18.1 DDD in Denmark, representing a 2.1-fold geographical variation. In all countries, prescribing was relatively high among individuals aged 15-19 years; lower in those aged 20-50 years; and then increased steadily reaching 41.8 DDD per 1000 inhabitants per day in individuals ≥ 85 years in Denmark. After age- and sex-standardization, prevalence of antibiotic use varied threefold from 160.2/1000 p-y in the UK to 421.1/1000 p-y in Italy. The ratio of broad- to narrow-spectrum penicillin, cephalosporin, and macrolide use varied from 0.6 in Denmark to 120.2 in Italy. Women used more antibiotics than men did in all countries. Across countries, the mean duration of antibiotic use varied 1.3 to 21.1-fold for different antibiotics.
conclusionsAntibiotic use is high in women and the elderly. Prescribing patterns vary substantially across European countries, both according to overall consumption, user prevalence, duration, and narrow- versus broad-spectrum antibiotics.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.