Can Antibiotics make Kids Fat?
Posted by Dave Fuller on
If you think your child antibiotics before the age of 2 is a good thing you might want to think again. Recently Dr Charles Bailey and staff looked at the records of nearly 65,000 children who tracked at clinics from 2001 through 2013. The researchers followed the children from birth to age 5. They tracked the height and weight of the children, and classified them as normal weight, overweight or obese.
Children who had four or more exposures to antibiotics were 11 percent more likely to be obese than those who did not. The researchers also looked at whether the antibiotics prescribed were narrow-spectrum, which are recommended as first-line treatment of common childhood infections, or broad-spectrum. The Children who got broad-spectrum antibiotics had a 16 percent higher chance of being obese than those who did not
The study found that 69 percent of the children were given antibiotics before age 2. On average, the children had 2.3 episodes of antibiotic use.
The study was published in the Sept. 29 online edition of the journal JAMA Pediatrics.