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. 2020 Mar 17;10(3):503.
doi: 10.3390/ani10030503.

The Online Sale of Antibiotics for Veterinary Use

Juan F Garcia  1 , M Jose Diez  2 , Ana M Sahagun  2 , Raquel Diez  2 , Matilde Sierra  2 , Juan J Garcia  2 , M Nelida Fernandez  2
Affiliations

The Online Sale of Antibiotics for Veterinary Use

Juan F Garcia et al. Animals (Basel). .

Abstract

Antibiotics are essential medicines against infectious diseases in both humans and animals. An inappropriate use of antibiotics can impair animal health and enhance the risk of bacterial resistance, as well as its transfer from animals to humans. The objective of this study was to assess the possibility of purchasing antibiotics for veterinary use on the internet, to evaluate if a prescription is required, and to determine the availability of drugs classified as the highest priority critically important antimicrobials (HP-CIA). The Google and Bing search engines and both simple and complex search strings in Spanish and in English were used. The simple search string was "buy veterinary antibiotics". Complex searches used wildcards and specific syntax. The searches carried out in Spanish revealed that 50% of websites operated in South America, and 65% of websites did not require a valid prescription. Fluoroquinolones were offered in 84% of these websites (45% without prescription), macrolides were offered in 63% of these websites (43% without prescription), and 3rd- and 4th-generation cephalosporins in 54% of these websites (38% without prescription). For the searches in English, 57% of these websites operated in the United States of America (USA), and 55% of them did not require a prescription. Fluoroquinolones were offered in 79% of these websites (49% without prescription), macrolides were offered in 72% of these websites (45% without prescription), and 3rd- and 4th-generation cephalosporins were offered in 49% of these websites (27% without prescription). Therefore, it is easy to illegally access antibiotics via the internet.

Keywords: antibiotics; antimicrobials; health care; livestock; online sale; pets; prescription; resistance; veterinary.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Example of URL extraction at the bottom of a search engine results page (SERP).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Information extraction process.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Flow diagram displaying the results from the searches performed in June 2019.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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