I sit here, snot dripping over my keyboard, hacking and shivering thanks to a lovely bout with a heavy cold (or something equally as nasty). For the past couple of days, after pillaging my medicine cabinet, I have been taking some ancient, leftover antibiotics, 500 mg of Amoxicillin. Yes, yes, I know the arguments against taking them – antibiotics only work on bacterial infections, I may be making whatever beasties I have immune to their efficacy, blah blah – but I feel as if they’re lessening the evil grip of whatever bug has me wrapped in its snotty grip.
Unfortunately, I’ve run out.
I don’t really want to ring up my doctor, and I seriously doubt he’d offer up a prescription for antibiotics without first examining me. And, frankly, speaking, I have no desire to cough up (pun moistly intended) another hundred or so dollars for this pleasure.
What I’m asking you, dopers, is whether the antibiotics for sale at my local fish-o-rama are safe for human consumption. I’ve already done the Google thang, but due to my sickenss my Google-fu is weak today and there seem to be conflicting opinions about the safety or efficacy of fish meds.
Please spare me the finger pointing re taking old antibiotics for an unknown infection and just tell me what you think about fish antibiotics.
Don’t take antibiotics without getting a valid prescription, ever. Whether they are people antibiotics, dog antibiotics, or fish antibiotics. You already said all the reasons you know it’s a bad idea, so why the fuck do you still want to do it? They won’t help you’re cold. At all. The only reasons you feel like their working is part placebo effect, but mostly just because colds tend to go away and get less severe after a few days.
So if it will keep you from making an idiot out of yourself, I’ll go ahead and tell you that fish antibiotics are terrible poisonous to humans. One little pill and you’re a dead man. Don’t even look at them/
I know you know this, but you shouldn’t be taking medical advice from random idiots on the internet (and I include myself as a random idiot). I don’t think anyone on here is qualified to tell you if the manufacturing standards for animal medications are the same as for humans in terms of safety, let alone efficacy.
I had a nasty cruddy cold a couple weeks ago and it never even crossed my mind to take any antibiotics. I’ve never done that for cold symptoms and I’ve been fine. I just went to the people pharmacy and asked the pharmacist for a med with pseudoephedrine in it and a Benzedrex nasal inhaler (which gives some instant gratification while waiting for the pills to kick in). That’s always been enough for me.
I can just picture the pet store clerk’s face when someone with a runny nose comes to the counter to buy an armful of fish antibiotics. Don’t look like the crazy guy to the fish store employee.
You aren’t asking, but I’ll chime in anyway with, “don’t use them!” just so that I am clear and on the record.
That said, there is no (real) difference between antibiotics sold “for fish”, “for dogs”, “for cats” or “for humans”. Amoxicillin is amoxicillin. The real difference is in the dosages for each species/person. However, antibiotics sold for aquariums or other OTC uses are far less regulated than those from your pharmacy, so the quality, purity and even expiration can be called into question.
I actually remember reading an article about this a couple of years ago. MitzeKatze hit the nail on the head, from what I remember. The FDA is pretty good about making sure that x mg of amoxicillin is really x mg when it comes to human prescriptions. They don’t care so much about fish medicine though and so there was a significantly wider margin of error with the fish antibiotics. There were also concerns about the filler used in the pills.
Side note: I occasionally forget things like my mother’s birthday, but can remember an article about fish antibiotics from over five years ago. Thank you brain for being ever so helpful with remembering important things.
[moderating]
This is a question for trained and qualified medical professionals, not for random people on an Internet forum – even this one.
[/moderating]
