Antibiotics Aside

Even so, some skeptics are beginning to question antibiotics’ near-universal use for AOM — including parents like Rebecca Keith, a Seattle mother of two, who has experienced firsthand antibiotics’ law of diminishing returns. Her son Alec, now five, began suffering frequent, painful episodes of acute otitis media when he was one. “For the first year, he was on amoxicillin a lot,” Keith recalls. “But after a while it stopped working. So we went through a string of others: Septra, Augmentin, Vantin, you name it. Sometimes he’d have to take three different drugs in a row before the infection would finally clear up.”

Just Say No

Each year, more than 100 million antibiotic prescriptions are issued in the United States, and many of those are written for children. Last fall, a coalition that included the CDC and the American Medical Association launched a nationwide publicity campaign to promote the more judicious use of antibiotics. Among the key targets for their message: parents, pediatricians’ offices, and childcare centers.