. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Jan 14.

Published in final edited form as: Lancet Infect Dis. 2011 Jun 12;11(9):692–701. doi: 10.1016/S1473-3099(11)70054-8

Table 2.

Potential and proven adverse events associated with antimicrobials taken without prescription

	Frequency	Description
No questioning by pharmacists regarding allergies^76,82	>80%	No advice or questions from pharmacy staff regarding allergies, side-effects, or drug interactions
No explanation of potential side-effects^87,88	About 50%	No advice or questions from pharmacy staff regarding allergies, side-effects, or drug interactions
Contraindicated antimicrobials	Up to 8% of antimicrobials used for children	Tetracyclines and fluoroquinolones dispensed for children^8,50
Parenteral antimicrobials for home use^{52,66,68,89–92}	Unknown	Injectable streptomycin, gentamicin, and penicillin provided
Inadequate treatment (of true bacterial infections)
Short course^{41,79,82,88,93}	Many treatment courses <1 day	··
Inadequate dose^10,41,85,88	Common	··
Inappropriate antimicrobial^74,83	Common	Inappropriate drug for indication
Low-quality medication^30,94–96	Unknown	··
Documented adverse events
Diarrhoea^51,64	5–11%	As reported by patients
Rash⁵¹	4%	··
Masked diagnosis of infectious disease⁹⁷	90% increased risk	Emergency room patients with detectable antimicrobials in urine had higher risk than those without for masked or missed diagnosis of infections
Renal failure⁹⁸	Case report	Non-prescribed rifampicin used for cough resulting in renal failure
Aplastic anaemia and death⁹⁹	Case report	Woman vacationing in Spain took chloramphenicol for upper respiratory infection