A group of researchers from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) has recently discovered that thousands of unrecorded allergies to penicillin are wrongfully labeled.
The new study will now aim to correct the erroneous notion about consuming antibiotics.
Allergy to Penicillin
When a person is allergic to a certain drug, he/she could not take it. Otherwise, the patient will suffer from its mild to severe side effects.
For many years, Hong Kong citizens were aware that they were allergic to penicillin. The information was immediately added to their health records.
According to a report by South China Morning Post, the information about the patient's history of allergies seemed to be outdated.
To address this problem, the HKU researchers are now collaborating with the Hospital Authority to monitor and evaluate those individuals who can intake penicillin.
If that's the case, then the team will correctly resolve the issue when it comes to drug resistance. According to the World Health Organization WHO, this is one of the top global health threats at the moment.
In Hong Kong, over 8,000 people were informed that they have a penicillin allergy. With that, they were alerted about their health history which is embedded in the records.
The same report from SCMP showed about 143,000 Hong Kong citizens were told not to take penicillin. However, intaking other antibiotics opens a huge risk for antimicrobial resistance among patients.
In light of this, Hong Kong Drug Allergy De-Labelling Initiative leader Dr. Philip Li-hei confirmed that those who are allergic to the antibiotic are prescribed penicillin.
The announcement was supported by a 2019 study from NHS Foundation Trust and HKU Medicine. The research concluded that patients across the UK and Hong Kong who are allergic to the drug can consume the drug without worrying about the side effects.
Mislabelling is the Problem
Indeed, Hong Kong struggles in fighting mislabelling because the medical experts in the city are not that many. According to Li, who also works as HKU Medicine's clinical assistant professor, it's because there was only a single allergist who is currently serving the healthcare system in the city.
Informing patients with erroneous labeling can be extremely dangerous especially when we're talking about bacterial infections.
When a doctor over-prescribes a drug to a patient, there's an aftermath that a person needs to bear. The continuous use of weaker alternatives could contribute to the progression of antibiotic resistance.
"Up to 90 percent of low-risk patients have been found to be non-allergic to penicillin following evaluation, and have been de-labeled," Gladys Kwok Suet-kei, advanced practice nurse of Hong Kong West Cluster said in a report by The Standard.
To quickly disseminate the correct information to the public, Kwok instructed the nurses to explain how significant is de-labelling to the diagnosis of their condition.
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Written by Joseph Henry
