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Antibiotic Usage in Babies Linked to Asthma
The opening remarks of an article from the October 1,
2003 BBC News states, "Babies given antibiotics are more likely to develop
asthma and other allergies, research suggests." The article reports on
research done at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. Senior researcher
and epidemiologist, Dr. Christine Cole Johnson, studied 448 children,
whose development was tracked for the first seven years of their lives.
The children were studied to see if there was any relationship between the
early usage of antibiotics and the onset of Asthma or Allergies.
Assessing the children repeatedly, the research team noticed several
interesting findings. By the age of seven, children
who were given at least one antibiotic in the
first six months of their lives were found to
be:
- 1.5 times more likely to develop allergies by age seven than those
who did not receive antibiotics and 2.5 times more likely to develop
asthma.
- 1.7 times more likely to develop allergies, and three times more
likely to develop asthma, if they lived in
those early years with fewer than two pets.
- nearly twice as likely to develop allergies if their mother had a
history of allergies.
- oddly enough, but children were nearly
twice as likely to develop allergies if they were also breast-fed for
more than four months, when combined with taking
antibiotics.
Interestingly, babies who were breastfed for more
than four months, and who received antibiotics in their first six months
were three times more likely to develop allergies, although they were no
more likely to develop asthma. Also, interesting was the result that
exposure to pets seemed to have a protective effect. Those given
antibiotics who lived in a family with fewer than two pets had 1.7 times
the risk of allergies and three times the risk of asthma. However, when a
family had two or more pets, the risk of allergies or asthma for the child
was back to normal levels.
The biggest risk of all - an 11-fold increase - was
found among children who were prescribed a broad-spectrum antibiotic, such
as penicillin, were breastfed for four months, and did not have any family
pets. The researchers also found evidence that the more courses of
antibiotics a child received during their first six months, the higher was
their risk of developing an allergy.
"I believe we need to be more prudent in prescribing
them for children at such a young age," said Dr. Christine Cole Johnson.
"In the past, many of them were prescribed unnecessarily, especially for
viral infections like colds and flus when they would have no effect
anyway."
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