More than a quarter of adult patients in the US deliberately lie to doctors to obtain antibiotic prescriptions for themselves or their children, according to a research team led by Alister Thorpe of the University of Utah, infohub.kz reports.
The findings of two related studies were published in the journal JAMA Network Open. Researchers analyzed questionnaires from 959 respondents and identified a troubling trend: 28% of participants admitted to misrepresenting their clinical picture. Among 263 caregivers, 27% said they had intentionally deceived pediatricians to obtain medication for their children.
Patients exaggerated the severity of their symptoms, invented signs of illness outright, or combined both methods. The main paradox was that people feigned viral infections, for which antibiotic therapy is not used. In 65% of cases the deception involved symptoms of the common cold: cough, fever and sore throat. In 49% of cases they fabricated abdominal pain, in 46% muscle aches, and only 31% of complaints involved urinary tract problems, for which these drugs are actually required. Despite the absurdity of the invented complaints, the deception worked: 77% of adults and 87% of parents obtained the prescriptions they sought.
People resorted to lying out of fear of illness, blind faith in pills and a desire to return quickly to school or work. Those who lied were more likely to believe that the threat of drug resistance is a fabrication of pharmaceutical companies. Professor Jeffrey Linder of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University stressed that doctors' concessions erode trust and pose risks to people's health.