In another one of those \"and why hasn't THIS been done before?\" kind of studies, Rachida el Moussaoui and colleagues at the Amsterdam's Academic Medical Center, randomized 119 patients to receive either 3 days or 8 days of amoxicillin for bacterial pneumonia. Though the 8-day course has long been the universal standard, the 3-day course proved equally effective--and half as likely to produce adverse side effects such as antibiotic-associated diarrhea or drug allergy.\n\nOf greater concern are the unseen side effects of those extra days of unnecessary antibiotics--especially the selective pressure they place on the body's trillions of resident bacteria. The longer the course of antibiotic, the higher the level of drug resistance bred into our native bacteria. Thanks to the wonders of bacterial gene swapping, this drugs resistance can easily end up in truly dangerous bug such as the strep, staph, and haemophilus behind most cases of bacterial pneumonia. ...\n\nStill, the study's conclusion contains a powerful if painfully obvious message. There's no scientific basis for the duration of antibiotic therapy for many common infections. With respiratory infections such as pneumonia accounting for an estimated 75 percent of all antibiotic prescriptions, determining the shortest EFFECTIVE course of antibiotics for these ills could go far in reducing drug resistance in all of us.\n\nTill then, of course ... be sure to take your antibiotics as prescribed, lest a too-short course fail to cure you.