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According to a new study from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, antibiotics should no longer be standard practice for treating bronchitis.

Two physician researchers at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine recently surveyed world literature on bronchitis, which included research studies, clinical trials and anything related to bronchitis and its treatment, and concluded that antibiotics should generally be avoided with bronchitis cases.

Dr. Richard P. Wenzel–one of the authors of the report–stated that “Physicians should be encouraged to avoid antibiotics in most cases”. The findings by Dr. Wenzel will be published in the Nov. 16 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Wenzel added that antibiotics being prescribed for bronchitis patients is overdone due to trying to treat the issue which “are caused by agents for which we have no therapy yet”, meaning viruses. Bronchitis is characterized by an inflammation of the bronchial airway.

Only a very small percentage of all bronchitis cases can be treated by doctors, but Dr. Wenzel estimates that 70 to 80 percent of bronchitis patients are given a course of antibiotics lasting five to 10 days.

Read more: Antibiotics Found Useless for Treating bronchitis