Early antibiotic use 'may predispose children to weight gain and asthma'

[ashark]

I wish it were easier to avoid their use, but without antibiotics my kids would spend like half the year with ear infections, miserable (and making everyone else miserable) and lethargic at best. Then there's strep—last year I discovered the hard way how dangerous that can be if you don't treat that very soon after symptoms start (I'd never had it, didn't realize what was happening/how serious it was at first)

[junto]

I think that the challenge we have is that today's antibiotics are really like the proverbial "sledgehammer to crack a nut".

There hasn't been a great deal of interest in discovering new antibiotics, as this extract from Wikipedia describes:

  Following a 40-year hiatus in discovering new 
  classes of antibacterial compounds, four new 
  classes of antibacterial antibiotics have been 
  brought into clinical use in the late 2000s and early
  2010s

I assume that there isn't much interest due to the limited financial rewards to the pharmaceutical industry.

What is really needed is a new way to target the truly " foreign " and trouble making bacteria in the body, and eradicate it. Hopefully in the next 40 years we can make such a breakthrough and stop the "carpet bombing" methods we have today.

[stefanix]

Having lived in the US and moved to Austria, I can say it's quite comical how few times doctors prescribe antibiotics here. It's something like 10:1.

At times this is frustrating because you want the easy fix and when antibiotics work they work really well.

It's also quite illuminating how many symptoms do not seem to benefit from taking antibiotics even when they are the knee-jerk treatment.

I sometimes joke that modern medicine is 50% prescribing cortisone and antibiotics.

[mrow84]

The following anecdote may not really be applicable to children, but you might find it interesting anyway. I went through a period of getting an ear infection, being prescribed antibiotics, having it clear up, but then having it recur sometime later. After quite a few goes round this loop I decided to just take painkillers (ibuprofen was very effective for me) and wait it out, and the infections stopped coming back.

[overcast]

I had strep every year around the holidays as a kid. It's a common, and easily treatable infection, but extremely dangerous left alone. It can go from bad to really bad, quickly, especially when it travels to the heart.

[Mz]

I wish it were easier to avoid their use

There are things you can do to reduce their need. A few things off the top of my head:

* Take shoes off at the front door (like Japan and a few other civilized places).

* Do not let the kids get on their beds wearing street clothes.

* Use hot baths and peroxide (in the ear) to help kill infection before it is so advanced that it requires antibiotics.

Of course, those things take work and are inconvenient, something many Americans seem allergic to. But if you really want to reduce antibiotic use, it absolutely can be done.

[TylerE]

Yep. Makes me wonder...

I'm overweight and asthmatic....and had frequent ear infections as a toddler.

[dghughes]

I can relate! I had ear aches nearly every week or it seemed like it when I was a kid in the 70s it was really bad. I got to like the taste of the orange Aspirin tablets my mother would crush them into some sugar.

When my father stopped smoking all my ear aches disappeared.

[esaym]

I've noticed that if I am very sick, even with antibiotics, I don't start getting better until 5+ days after first dose. Wondering what my body would naturally do with those five days, I've basically stopped going to the doc and just fight it off myself.

Really haven't noticed a difference. I'm talking stuff like ear pain, pink eye, severe sinus pain, ect. Don't know what I've had (since I didn't go to the doc, though I don't think they know half the time anyway..), but I survived it.

I'm sure there are valid reasons for antibiotics, but they are clearly over prescribed.

[overcast]

You're an outlier then. Within twenty-four hours of taking an antibiotic, I've always felt MUCH better. I will agree they are over prescribed, especially for things that don't even respond to antibiotics(viruses). But there is no denying their effectiveness.

[drzaiusapelord]

Sample group of me, my wife, and my son. We see symptoms die down in 24-48 hours. Its very clear they work, especially in my case where I've always had a long hard struggle fighting off infections.

I do make an effort to get more Vitamin D in the winter, which has been helping me avoid getting sick, but not recover faster.

>Wondering what my body would naturally do with those five days

Strep can become deadly in children. Invasive strep has a significant mortality rate, and that's with treatments. If you think you have strep you should get treated.

Also, I find it amusing you consider drugs unnatural. We are a tool using species, naturally. Developing and using drugs is in our nature.

Lastly, this is the same reasoning anti-vaxxers have, so I'd be careful here. It can lead to some really bad outcomes.

[staunch]

Don't try this with any kind of infected bite (human or animal). You will lose limbs or die.

[hanklazard]

The symptoms you're describing can all be part of viral processes. Antibiotics will do nothing for these conditions.

[redwood]

how do you know what you have is bacterial as opposed to viral? You may be taking antibiotics for no reason.

[KaiserPro]

Sinus infections are pretty hard to treat with antibiotics.

[gmarx]

Whenever you read the word "may" in the title of an article about a scientific study, you should mentally fill in the end..."then again, it may not"

[fiatjaf]

Unbelievable.

[wiredfool]

I wonder if there's a correlation between kids with asthma/weight gain and pre-labor antibiotics given to the mother to control Group B strep.

That seems like it could be the sort of study that could be done based on a medical records search, as the data should be recorded. (not that it's easy to get the data...)

[refurb]

Antibiotics were first discovered around WW2. Use of antibiotics was rampant in early years (it's come down since then, but is still excessive).

Why do we see a rise in obesity only in the last 20-30 years?

[TylerE]

One of my pet theories is that is has to do with the decline in cigarette smoking.

[blakesterz]

It's funny, I've seen this before and my experience is the exact opposite. I've got 2 kids that were on what feels like a million antibiotics when they were young, one's thin, one's average. I've got a 3rd kid was NEVER on them at all, he's obese. I know this and other studies are population averages and all that, but it always surprises me when my experience is the exact opposite. Something to do with what gut microbes were killed or something?

[andy_ppp]

Killing gut microbes considered harmful...

[SteveNuts]

What?

[rdmcfee]

It's an interesting hypothesis but unfortunately a cohort study with no randomized control and n=236 isn't really meaningful. There's no control at all here and the sample size is tiny.

[kmm]

236 is a massieve sample size and it is more than sufficient for showing an effect here. The p-values are below 0.001, and while p-values aren't everything, it's a strong indicator that the result is statistically significant.

[antibiotic956]

Interesting article and it is a coincidence in my life. My wife is pregnant and has been diagnosed with Group B strep and the dr has said she will be given Ampicillin during labor. I have some concerns regarding this, and now I read this article.

Dr says that there is 1 in 1000 chances of the baby getting (very) sick. With the antibiotics the chances are 1 in 4000.

I am wondering if anyone here has had experience with this.

[hanklazard]

Ped doc here. Group B strep can cause severe sepsis in neonates and I would definitely recommend that she get 1-2 doses of an antibiotic while in labor. I have not seen any good evidence that this sort of treatment causes any problems down the road for the baby. Furthermore, if you consider the mechanism that this paper suggests, it involves the manipulation of gut flora. A neonate's GI tract is sterile when it comes into the world, and is colonized over the first months to years of life. So since there are no bacteria to affect, this proposed mechanism should have no relevance. Also, Amp's half-life is just a few hours so no long-lasting presence in your baby. Don't mess with group B strep--before we understood how to deal with it, it made a lot of babies very sick and many died.

[PythonicAlpha]

Good, that the usage of antibiotics is rising in cattle-breeding.

The blind usage of the fruits of progress is one of our biggest problems in a world, where many problems of human beings have relieved by the same.