As reported by MSN, thousands of people in the UK may be mistakenly avoiding penicillin due to inaccurate allergy records, according to a groundbreaking new clinical trial
The study, led by researchers at the University of Leeds and published in The Lancet Primary Care, found that a significant number of patients who believe they are allergic to penicillin are, in fact, not. Researchers say many of these patients could benefit from formal testing to confirm or rule out the allergy.
The trial is the first of its kind in the UK and involved 823 participants from 51 GP practices across England. All had a recorded penicillin allergy in their medical history, but none had experienced a previous severe reaction.
Participants underwent testing for penicillin allergy, starting with either a small injection under the skin or an oral dose of the antibiotic. If no immediate reaction occurred, they were then prescribed a three-day course of penicillin to be taken at home, while being closely monitored by the research team.
The results were striking. Only 30 individuals tested positive for a genuine allergy, while 335 — around 92% — tested negative. Within three months, 276 participants had the allergy label removed from their medical records. After one year, that number rose to 321, representing 88% of those tested.
Dr Jonathan Sandoe, the study’s lead author and associate clinical professor in Microbiology at the University of Leeds School of Medicine and Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, stressed the importance of these findings in the context of rising antibiotic resistance.
“Antibiotics have been life-saving drugs since the late 1930s, but we are now in an era where microbes are evolving to resist the effects of current antibiotics,” he said. “The global challenge of antibiotic resistance is causing people to die of common infections, so it is vital to find ways to improve how antibiotics are used. Assessing people with penicillin allergy labels is one way we can achieve this.”
Researchers believe that clearing up inaccurate allergy labels could improve antibiotic prescribing, reduce unnecessary use of broad-spectrum alternatives, and help combat the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance.
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