How doctors can help weed out fake penicillin allergies

There’s a common problem with penicillin allergies: Millions of people who think they have them actually don’t. Now, experts have laid out recommendations for how doctors should handle unverified allergies. A key step: get the details about the reaction behind a reported allergy. That will help determine what might be a true allergy and what might have another cause, like a rash from a viral infection and not the penicillin used to treat it. That's important not just for patients, but also the fight against antibiotic resistance, since people with unverified allergies are often treated with more broad-spectrum antibiotics. "Penicillin allergy evaluations are an emerging important component of antibiotic stewardship," says study author Dr. Kimberly Blumenthal.