When antibiotics given in hospital make you ill

as many as a fifth of hospital patients given antibiotics have an adverse reaction to them — and in a fifth of those cases, the patients actually didn’t need the drugs in the first place, reports the journal Jama Internal medicine.

In the U.s. study, doctors from Johns Hopkins Hospital, in baltimore, examined the medical records of nearly 1,500 patients and found the most common antibiotic reactions were gastrointestinal, kidney and blood abnormalities. many of the patients had to spend longer in hospital as a result of such complications.

The researchers suggested patients should speak to their doctors about potential side- effects and how to recognise them.