If your child has two courses of antibiotics in a year, the next treatment is 30 per cent more likely to fail, a study suggests.

Children who had already received antibiotics for coughs, sore throats and earaches within the same year were more likely to fail to respond to the next dose and need additional drugs, hospital treatment or end up in A&E. Taking unnecessary antibiotics could do children more harm than good, researchers suggested.

The lead researcher, Oliver van Hecke of the University of Oxford, said: “Giving a second prescription is not going to help the child, their parents or doctors. The child doesn’t get any better and doctors are creating extra work for themselves.” For the study, published in the British Journal of