;Resize=(1200,627)&impolicy=perceptual&quality=medium&hash=57bd5066246ba4d384bc307b3295a3b3c4729386e6af4d02effdf73433109490 "What many do not know: these sore throat tablets contain antibiotics")
- Sucking away a sore throat with medication containing antibiotics usually does not work.
- The Chamber of Pharmacists even advises against it.
- The well-known remedy Lemocin is also one of them.
A sore throat often comes with a cough and runny nose during the cold season. Pharmacists, on the other hand, often recommend lozenges.
What many people suffering from a cold don’t know: the over-the-counter medicines contain antibiotics in addition to pain-relieving substances.
According to the market research institute IMS Health, four million packs of sore throat medicines with antibiotics are sold in Germany every year. This usually makes little sense. Because it is usually viruses that cause colds and antibiotics do not work against them anyway.
Pharmacists advise against lozenges containing antibiotics
Even if a bacterial infection triggers the sore throat in individual cases, the Federal Chamber of Pharmacists (ABDA) advises against lozenges containing antibiotics. Even to combat this, the concentration of the active ingredient on the oral mucosa is too low.
The treatment of sore throats with lozenges containing antibiotics has long been rejected in order not to breed resistant germs, says Peter Federspil, chairman of the working group ENT infectiology.
“The addition of antibiotics is useless at best, if not harmful,” explains Michael Schneider to the Swiss portal “Watson.ch”. In Switzerland, the family doctor from Bern works with the NEXT group (new expert strategy for the treatment of sore throats) to ensure that medication is used properly. However, NEXT supports, among others, the company Reckit Benickser AG, which produces an antibiotic-free sore throat.
These drugs contain antibiotics
In Germany, according to information from the Chamber of Pharmacists, antibiotics are used in sore throat tablets as tyrothricin (eg in Lemocin, Dorithricin) and fusafungin (eg in Locabiosol).
You can find out whether these active ingredients are also in the medicines in your medicine chest by looking at the leaflet.
Is the number of antibiotic resistances due to sore throat lozenges increasing?
On the one hand, the antibiotics in the lozenges are pointless in most cases. On the other hand, more and more people worldwide are developing resistance to the active ingredients.
If you suffer from infections caused by resistant bacteria, the classic antibiotics are no longer effective. To prevent this, the Chamber of Pharmacists recommends: “Responsible use of antibiotics can prevent resistance.”
The pharmaceutical companies, on the other hand, believe that the antibiotic tyrothricin contained in sore throat lozenges plays little role in this regard. “Under therapeutic conditions, no resistances and cross-resistances have become known,” said the company Novartis Consumer Health on FOCUS-Online request. It manufactures such well-known products as Lemocin. The antibiotic tyrothricin is not absorbed into the body through oral intake.
As far as the two substances tyrothricin and fusafungin are concerned, the development of resistance is still questionable, since they are applied locally, says Peter Federspil: “Nevertheless, I have seen little treatment success with tyrothricin so far.”
In principle, it is always important to critically examine whether antibiotics and penicillin need to be used if someone is suffering from tonsillitis, for example. For pain relief, the ENT doctor recommends active ingredients such as flurbiprofen or ibuprofen from the group of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs).