Journal article
Ethics of antibiotic course duration: shorter is better
- Abstract:
- Antibiotic treatment course duration has for decades been dictated by two questionable ideas: first, that longer courses are more effective at curing bacterial infections; second, that longer courses are less likely to lead to drug resistance. Recently, the “shorter is better” movement has challenged the received wisdom, showing shorter-duration antibiotic courses provide similar cure rates, fewer antibiotic-related harms, and possibly less contribution to of antibiotic resistance for common infections. Yet, physicians typically still prescribe longer courses of antibiotics than clinical guidelines recommend. This is ethically unacceptable. In this paper, we argue that prescribing physicians are ethically obligated to prescribe shorter antibiotic courses, given that prescribing physicians bear duties both toward their patients and to protect public health. We rebut objections to our argument and furthermore argue for an ethical obligation of physician-researchers to conduct further trials comparing the shortest current evidence-based course of antibiotics with courses that are even shorter.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.9MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1080/15265161.2026.2632006
Authors
+ Wellcome Trust
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- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/029chgv08
- Grant:
- 221719/Z/20/Z
- Publisher:
- Taylor & Francis
- Journal:
- American Journal of Bioethics More from this journal
- Publication date:
- 2026-03-06
- Acceptance date:
- 2025-10-10
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1536-0075
- ISSN:
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1526-5161
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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2299770
- Local pid:
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pubs:2299770
- Deposit date:
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2025-10-14
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Johnson et al
- Copyright date:
- 2026
- Rights statement:
- © 2026 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & francis Group, llc. This is an open Access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricteduse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of theAccepted manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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