A multi-year study of nationally representative antibiotic prescription data published in the BMJ Open journal demonstrated a declining prevalence of typhoid in India. However, the total number of cases is greater than initially anticipated.

The study′s findings reported more than a million cases of typhoid occurred each year in children under the age of 10, and nearly one-third of all occurrences of the disease are in young adults.

Dr. Shaffi Koya, a research fellow at Boston University School of Public Health in the US, stated that the studys key findings included a decline in cases from 9.9 million in 2013 to 7.9 million in 2015, mostly in the north and west regions, but that children under the age of 10 accounts for more than a million cases annually and that boys and men bear the greatest burden.

The information was derived from the prescriptions written by a panel of 4,600 primary care physicians working in the private sector chosen via a multistage stratified random sample. The IQVIA databases records for the years 2013, 2014, and 2015 had 671 million prescriptions for antibiotics.

The study reveals a high rate of typhoid antibiotic prescriptions. In terms of absolute numbers, 18.6% of the overall burden in the nation is children aged 10 to 19. The highest age-specific rate was seen in the group of those aged 20 to 29, and males had a higher average rate than females.

According to researchers, 72.4% of all prescriptions included ten different antibiotics. Except for south India, other areas preferred the cefixime-ofloxacin combination as the treatment of choice for typhoid. For adult patients, the drug of choice includes combination antibiotics, whereas cephalosporins are recommended for young patients and children. Quinolones accounted for 23% of prescriptions as a single therapy.

Dr. Koya further said that routine immunization with the conjugate typhoid vaccine could lower Indias typhoid burden and need for antibiotics.

(Source: https://theprint.in/india/indias-typhoid-burden-decreasing-study-of-antibiotic-prescription-trends-shows/1176091/)