Antibiotics taken abroad may increase risk of bacterial infection

Antibiotics used abroad as a preventive measure may increase the risk of infection with locally resistant bacteria. This was stated by expert Marek Štefan from the Clinic of Infectious Diseases and Travel Medicine of the University Hospital in Motol at today's seminar on travel medicine by the Czech Medical Chamber. According to him, contact with a medical facility is also a risk in some countries, for example after a traffic accident.

"We can also bring a souvenir from our vacation that we don't even know about, and that is colonization with local bacteria," he said. According to him, it may be bacteria that the locals are used to, for example in Egypt that cause traveler's diarrhea.

Some bacteria may also be resistant to common antibiotics. "The further south we go on the map, to subtropical and tropical countries, the higher the incidence of bacteria with antibiotic resistance," he said. According to him, the risk increases if a person uses antibiotics locally, for example as a preventive measure, because their normal intestinal bacteria will be affected by them.

According to doctors, people should pay particular attention if they have a fever after returning from abroad. "Fever after returning from the tropics is a completely different situation than fever here in the Czech Republic," said the head of the clinic, Milan Trojánek. According to him, since September 2022, the clinic has treated about 80 patients with one of the tropical infections. The most common were dengue fever (40) and malaria (12). However, according to Trojánek, relatively rare cases of hookworm, brucellosis or hepatic fasciolosis have also appeared.

Doctors from the local clinic sent out a questionnaire to people who sought advice before leaving or after returning from abroad. About 410 people filled it out. Most often, these were people traveling to Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa or South Asia. "We were surprised that most people did not follow our recommendations," said Trojánek. For example, people drank drinks with ice or ate food sold on the streets, he said.

Two-thirds of those surveyed said they had health problems abroad. The most common was so-called traveler's diarrhea. For its treatment, experts recommend common absorbents, such as activated charcoal, and in most cases antibiotics are not necessary.

WT.24