The Increasing Interest in Antibiotic Stewardship Programs

Background: The inappropriate use of antibiotics leads to many adverse effects and also leads to bacterial resistance. A hospital-based program, commonly referred to as antibiotic stewardship programs, is used to improve the usage of antibiotics. This study aims to explore the increasing interest of the public in antibiotic stewardship programs by using data from Google Trends and Twitter.

Methodology: A search trends feature that shows how frequently a given search term is entered into Google’s search engine (Google Trends) and a social network site (Twitter) were used.

Results: The public and the health care professionals are now more interested in antibiotic use and antibiotic resistance due to the development of more severe infections that were caused by bacteria resisted to many antibiotics which lead to high morbidity and mortality rates.

Conclusion: There is a high prevalence of infections caused by multi-drug resistant organism that could lead to more mortality and morbidity rates, as a result the interest in antimicrobial stewardship programs in internet is increased. So it is important to increase the knowledge of health care professionals regarding the appropriate antibiotic use and to encourage them to change their unsuitable prescribing patterns.