Abstract

Introduction: Sepsis from bacterial infection remains a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. Antibiotic use continues to increase in the community and secondary care. This is driven by the potential benefits to the individual patient of a course of antibiotics. Far less attention is given to the potential adverse effects of antibiotic use in our view. These costs may be significant to both the individual and society. Areas covered: We review the evidence underpinning the costs and benefits of antibiotic use. We also discuss strategies to personalize medicine in this area that maximize the benefit to cost ratio for patients and society. Expert opinion: The body’s innate immune response to infection is similar to that of other inflammatory insults. Our view is as clinicians we need to differentiate these responses and hence require an accurate method to determine a diagnosis of a bacterial infection and monitor illness severity. Without this, clinicians will continue to prescribe significant volumes of unnecessary antibiotics in cases of non-bacterial inflammatory states.