My patient took OTC antibiotics for common cold. Years later, they could not treat his pneumonia. What made him drug

When a 45-year-old patient came into the ICU with severe pneumonia, I did some history-taking. He had had no hospital history, had fairly robust health and had no co-morbidities. Yet none of the antibiotics prescribed weren’t quite working on him. We did antibiotic sensitivity tests and found the most common ones to be ineffective. He needed a stronger, potent dose of the next level of antibiotics. Why had he become resistant to the drugs that were designed to kill his infection?

It turned out that he had been self-medicating himself for years, taking over-the-counter antibiotics whenever he had the seasonal flu and cold. Although antibiotics do not help with the flu virus and work only on bacteria, he kept on taking them to suppress his cold and flu attacks all his life. Worse, he stoppe