Using antibiotics for therapeutic purposes is the leading cause of false-negative cultures in joint prosthesis infections, which reduces the sensitivity of the culture in different ways, such as bacterial biofilm formation. Discontinuing antibiotics at least 2 weeks before sampling can help increase the sensitivity of the culturing. More studies should be done on other factors related to the effect of antibiotics on culture results, including the type of antibiotic and microorganism. With the available data, it can only be said that beta-lactams are the most common antibiotics used as therapeutic agents, leading to negative culture results. According to the Al-Mayahi study, therapeutic antibiotics increase the possibility of non-fermenting Gram-negative bacteria growth.
Zangiabadian et al. (Wed,) studied this question.