More Than a Quarter of People Fib to Get Antibiotics, and Their Stories Give Them Away

More than a quarter of people admit to, or are found to have made up, symptoms to get antibiotics from a clinician. The habit is not new to doctors, who have long watched patients ask for the drugs for colds, sore throats, and bouts of flu. What the new finding adds is a sense of how badly those invented stories are put together.

The fabrications tend to describe the wrong kind of illness. Patients who make up symptoms often report fever, cough, congestion, or a sore throat, which are the hallmarks of viral infections. Antibiotics do nothing against viruses. So the story meant to win a prescription usually points straight at the conditions the drug cannot touch, and a clinician who knows that pattern can see through it without much effort.

The stakes go beyond a wasted trip to the pharmacy. Every unnecessary course exposes the patient to side effects such as stomach upset and diarrhea while offering no benefit. It also feeds antibiotic resistance, the gradual process that makes common infections harder to treat when a real bacterial infection arrives. Public health officials have pushed for years to cut unnecessary prescriptions for exactly this reason.

Doctors are left with a difficult job. They have to judge symptoms they cannot check, often in a short appointment, and they cannot treat every patient who asks as a suspect. Clear explanations of why a virus does not respond to antibiotics, along with targeted questions about symptoms, can help clinicians decide without accusing anyone. Patients who simply describe what they feel, instead of what they think will get them a prescription, make that decision far easier.

The lesson is less about catching liars than about getting the right treatment to the right person. A made-up symptom may get someone a prescription, but it will not cure a cold.