“I take antibiotics every day and one thing scares me”

A woman who often depended on daily antibiotics has revealed something that terrifies her. Cerys Upstone was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis when she was just four weeks old. The 19-year-old, like many cystic fibrosis patients, often relied on antibiotics, sometimes daily for months.

CF is an inherited disease that causes sticky mucus to build up in the lungs and digestive system. This can cause digestion problems, but it also means that people with CF are more susceptible to infections and superbugs.

Cerys resorted to antibiotics whenever she had any type of infection. But many of the bacteria that cause these infections are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics, a phenomenon called the “silent pandemic.”

“I have to take a lot of antibiotics and antimicrobial resistance worries me,” Ceres said. “I used to take antibiotics for a long time because I kept getting infections. I’ve been taking them for years. I depend a lot on antibiotics, I’ve been taking them my whole life and I always ask doctors about it.”

Cerys explained that when she was a child she suffered from a serious infection every year. This requires hospitalization and intravenous antibiotics. In 2021, she began receiving Kaftrio triple combination therapy, which slowed the deterioration of lung function. Although she still suffers from frequent respiratory infections, Cerys has not received any intravenous antibiotic treatments since starting this therapy, but has still received about 15 courses of oral antibiotics this year.

NICE is currently looking at whether CF medicines like Kaftrio offer “good value for money for the taxpayer”, meaning some people who haven’t yet started taking modulators may never receive life-saving treatment. .

“I was 16 when I started, they always say that when you reach adolescence you really start to see a decline in CF, I think I’ve reached that point. I live a pretty normal life now.

“Obviously, being a student, there are a lot of infections all the time. “I’ve been on antibiotics this year I don’t even know how many times, probably 15 to 20 times.”

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She shares her experience during World Antimicrobial Resistance Awareness Week with Public Health Wales, which encourages professionals and the general public to only use antibiotics when necessary.

Cerys said she thinks a lot about the prospect of antibiotic resistance. She said: “As much as I depend on them, I don’t know what I would do without them. Most people when they have a cough know that they can stop and see if it gets worse, I can’t because it gets worse very quickly. If it weren’t for this opportunity, I don’t know what else I would do.”

Public Health Wales says: “The danger of using antibiotics when they are not needed is that it can lead to antimicrobial resistance, where the antibiotic no longer kills the bacteria. No one should store antibiotics or share them with family, friends or pets. If you have unused antibiotics, return them to your local pharmacy. Throwing them in the trash or flushing them down the toilet causes river pollution, which threatens the health of people and animals.”

Antibiotic resistance will mean that common infections such as tonsillitis and urinary tract infections could become more difficult to treat in the future. However, it can also affect more complex and serious infections, such as meningitis. For the latest health and Covid news, sign up to our newsletter here.

Elary Davies, deputy medical director and health program lead for AMR infections at Public Health Wales, said: “Antibiotics are a valuable life-saving resource and we must use them responsibly. “If we don’t, the danger is that our antibiotics will become ineffective, meaning we won’t be able to treat common infections.”