A low rate of fungal disease in Norway may be partially due to the country's restrictive policies on antibiotic use, say a group of Norwegian researchers in the December 1998 issue of the Journal of Clinical Microbiology . Researchers from the Norwegian National Institute of Public Health, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and several hospitals throughout the country did a survey of fungal bloodstream infections reported in Norway from 1991 to 1996. The rate of infections was found to be half the rate found in a survey of Dutch university hospitals and one fifth the rate in Iowa during that period. Possible reasons for this difference might be a restricted antibiotic use policy in Norway and perhaps also that the antibiotic use is different from many other countries.
Antibiotic use can have an effect on fungal infections.
In addition to killing disease-causing bacteria antibiotics can kill off the body's supply of protective bacteria, allowing fungi, which are not affected by antibiotics, to grow, spread and cause infection.