A new British study has shown that antibiotics, the common prescription of doctors for sinus infections, may not help to cure sinusitis. In this new study, people who were suffering from sinus infection symptoms including runny nose with green or yellow mucus, generally got better in about two weeks whether or not they took antibiotics or not.



Antibiotics such as Amoxicillin are some of the most commonly prescribed medicines for sinus infections. The current view that antibiotics are the most effective way to combat a common sinus infection can now effectively be challenged. The study appears in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Physicians may now start to focus on other sinus infection remedies such as steam inhalation, or natural sinus infection sprays to treat the symptoms of a sinus infection.

During the study, researchers also treated a group of sinus sufferers with common steroid sprays and the results were the same as those for antibiotics.

Sinus infections are very common in the United States and some estimates show that over 31 million Americans are diagnosed with sinus infections each year.

In 1999, the Mayo Clinic performed a study that found that most cases of chronic sinus infections, those lasting longer than 2 weeks and can last months or years, are caused by an immune system response to fungus and not by bacteria. This new study seems to confirm in some ways the finding of the Mayo study.

Since antibiotics are only effective against bacteria, this would make perfect sense why many chronic and acute sinus infections do not respond to the common antibiotics that doctors so often prescribe.

In 2001, the U.S. physicians' group issued guidelines advising against using antibiotics for most sinus infections in otherwise healthy people, blaming overuse for contributing to the growing problem of bacteria resistant to drugs.