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  • Status:: In follow-up

Penicillin allergy status and its effect on antimicrobial prescribing, patient outcomes, and antimicrobial resistance.

BACKGROUND

Penicillins are an important group of antibiotics that are recommended treatment for many infections.

About 1 in 10 people think they are allergic to penicillin. It is usual for a “penicillin allergy label” in primary care electronic health records (eHR) to alert doctors to avoid penicillins and prescribe different types of antibiotics for their patients. We are concerned that these different types of antibiotics may not work as well as penicillins and may be more expensive. Recent research has also found that patients with a penicillin-allergy label may have a higher risk of infection with resistant bacteria and may not do as well as people without this label. However, about 9 out of 10 people who believe they are penicillin-allergic are found not to be when tested, and so could safely take penicillins. These patients may be receiving less effective antibiotic treatments with additional long-term health risks.

Aim: To find out if people with a penicillin-allergy label in their GP health records really do have an allergy by specialist testing, and to see if we can reduce the number of patients wrongly labelled as penicillin allergic.

 

Study Design:               This is a two arm, individually randomised, multicentre, open feasibility study, running in to a main trial.
Sponsor: University of Leeds
Ethical Approval:   REC No: 19/LO/0176
Chief Investigator:

Dr Jonathan Sandoe, University of Leeds

Prof Sue Pavitt, University of Leeds

Contact Details:

alabama@phc.ox.ac.uk

Website:

https://www.phc.ox.ac.uk/research/participate/alabama-trial 

 

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