Children exposed repeatedly to antibiotics in their first 2 years of life were more likely to be obese later in childhood…
Children with four or more courses of antibiotics were 11% more likely than others to become obese, according to Charles Bailey, MD, PhD, of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and colleagues.
But the effect was restricted to broad-spectrum drugs, suggesting that narrower antibiotic selection might modify the risk, Bailey and colleagues reported online in JAMA Pediatrics.
Because obesity is multifactorial, the authors argued, cutting its prevalence means “identifying and managing multiple risk factors whose individual effects may be small but modifiable.”
In 2011, the Institute of Medicine identified several such factors, including the mother’s pre-pregnancy body mass index, physical activity, and sleep duration. But one “emerging factor,” Bailey and colleagues noted, was the role played by microbial populations in the intestine, which can be affected by antibiotics…
They looked at recorded antibiotic prescriptions in the first 2 years of life and used Cox proportional hazards models to look for associations with obesity in the following 3 years…
Some 69% of the children in the cohort had at least one exposure to antibiotics before 24 months, with an average of 2.3 episodes per child, the investigators found…
Children who were given antibiotics were similar at the time of exposure in terms of weight-for-length to children who did not get the drugs.
But cumulative exposure to antibiotics was associated with later obesity…The effect was greater for broad-spectrum antibiotics…
Getting broad-spectrum drugs early was also associated with obesity, Bailey and colleagues found.
I don’t care what the rationale may be. Whether parents unreasonably demand antibiotics – and doctors cave in. Just like “social promotion” in some school systems for children with failing grades. Or whether your family GP is getting spiffs from some pharmaceutical corporation detailer.
The appropriate response to studies like this is to halt overmedication. Further studies are always needed to confirm or counter; but, meanwhile, let’s try to err on the side of healthier kids, eh?