[Travelers' diarrhea: resistance to antibiotics]

There is a discrepancy between the recommendations developed by international organisations and infectious disease societies about the prescription of antibiotics for non severe diseases and those established by travel medicine experts for travelers' diarrhea. For the first ones, the prescription of antibiotics should be drastically reduced; for the second, antibiotics should be used by the vast majority of travelers with diarrhea. We believe that the latter recommendation goes against the general interest since 1) travelers' diarrhea is usually benign, 2) there is no recent study on the effectiveness of chemoprophylaxis or treatment in different countries with different level of antibiotic resistance of usual enteropathogens, 3) there is no data on travelers' perception of their illness and on their attitudes in case of diarrhea.