Nearly 30% of US adults admit to lying about or exaggerating their symptoms to get antibiotics from doctors, survey finds

Nearly 30% of U.S. adults have been dishonest with their doctors in order to obtain antibiotics, either by exaggerating their symptoms or inventing them, suggests a new nationwide survey. In a related study, around a quarter of caregivers for children and teenagers also admitted to misrepresenting their kids' symptoms to secure antibiotics for them.

Physicians acknowledge that patients occasionally lie to them. However, the study's results remain significant due to the growing issue of antibiotic resistance, which occurs when bacteria become resistant to the drugs designed to kill them. According to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), drug-resistant bacteria and fungi caused about 9.7 million infections in the U.S. in 2023, a significant increase from 2.8 million in 2017.

The number of deaths attributed to these resistant germs also rose from 35,000 to 50,800 over the same period.

Antibiotic resistance is primarily driven by inappropriate use of antibiotics, such as taking them for viral infections, which the drugs cannot treat. Both the prescribing doctors and the patients play a crucial role in this issue, as the two new surveys indicate. The first survey, conducted in January and February 2026, involved nearly 960 adults nationwide.

It found that about 28% of respondents had lied about their symptoms to their healthcare provider, with 26% exaggerating their existing symptoms and 17% fabricating symptoms. The most common symptoms patients lied about were cold-like ones, such as fever, cough, and sore throat. More than two-thirds of these patients were moderately confident that their lies would lead to a prescription for antibiotics, and 77% claimed the strategy was successful at least once.

Often, patients lied because they felt very ill, strongly believed that antibiotics would help them recover quickly, and wanted control over their treatment.

Patients who lied were more likely to feel that doctors didn't take them seriously or believed that antibiotic resistance was a myth. However, less than 30% of these patients regretted lying about their symptoms or taking the prescribed antibiotics. Those who did express regret cited side effects, ineffective treatment, or the moral wrongness of lying as reasons for their regret.

The second survey, involving 236 parents and guardians of children and teens under 18, yielded similar results. About 27% of these caregivers admitted to lying about their children's symptoms to obtain antibiotics, with 87% believing that their lies were effective at least once. Their motivations for lying were very similar to those of the survey respondents.

The study suggests that symptom misrepresentation may contribute to antibiotic overuse in pediatric care. Ideally, antibiotics should only be used when truly necessary to help relieve the pressure on bacteria to develop resistance. However, the surveys did not represent the entire U.S. population, so the prevalence of lying should be considered a tentative measure that requires further investigation.