Background & objectives: One of the most proven trajectories for analyzing the drug consumption patterns in the community is to assess the prescriptions. Using the antibiotics for prevention and treatment of infectious diseases not only leads to the loss of pathogens but also causes various complications, the most important of which is the drug resistance. The aim of current study was investigating the different antibiotics prescript by general practitioners (GPs) for outpatients in Ardabil city.

Methods: This study is designed based on the cross-sectional method. The number of 2,000 copies (according to Morgan) from total of 526000 copies sent to Ardabil health insurance during the 4 seasons of 2013 were randomly evaluated. The collected data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, ANOVA and T-Test using spss software. The P ≤0.05 was considered statistically significant.

Results: In this study the average drug per prescription was 3.6 and 54.9% of the prescriptions included antibiotics so that the cefixime, azithromycin, Co-amoxiclave and penicillin 6.3.3 were the most frequently prescribed antibiotics, respectively. The highest prescriptions belonged to penicillins (39.4%) cephalosporins (27.7%) and macrolides (18.3%). The most expensive antibiotic was cefixime tablet (32% of the total cost). The most of the antibiotics were prescribed to be taken orally (tablets or capsules). The mean price of each prescription was 74539±71050 Rials. The highest rate of antibiotic prescription was related to the autumn and then winter and there was a significant relationship between the the number of antibiotics in different seasons of the year (p = 0.005).

Conclusion: The average drugs of each prescription are in accordance with local statistics, but much higher than the global figures. The frequency of antibiotics prescription was higher than the global, several Middle Eastern and even African countries’ indices but was lower than the average level of some regions in the country. The pattern of prescribing antibiotics among the Ardabil GPs shows the more drugs in number and expensive broad-spectrum. The average price of prescripts was higher than the national average. These findings suggest that prescription and using antibiotics is not desirable in Ardabil.