Shorter-course penicillin effective for strep throat: study
Guidelines could change if findings 'deemed convincing': study author
15th October 2019
A five-day course of penicillin appears to be as effective as a 10-day course for pharyngotonsillitis caused by group A streptococci, a study finds.
Swedish researchers hypothesised that 800mg penicillin V given four times daily for five days would be noninferior to the recommended dose of 1000mg penicillin V given three times daily for 10 days.
This was based on the idea that the efficacy of beta-lactam antibiotics depended on time above the minimum inhibitory concentration of the unbound drug concentration in serum.
They carried out a