Children, who receive antibiotics often during childhood, gain weight significantly faster than those who don’t, researchers found. The findings, published online in the International Journal of Obesity, suggest that antibiotics may have a compounding effect on body mass index, a measure often used to determine whether someone is at a healthy weight.
“Your BMI may be forever altered by the antibiotics you take as a child,” says study leader Brian S. Schwartz, a professor of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Our data suggests that every time we give an antibiotic to kids, they gain weight faster over time.”
Antibiotics seven or more times: Schwartz and his colleagues analysed electronic health records on 163,820 children between three and 18 years old, who were patients of Pennsylvania’s Geisinger Health System. They examined body weight and height and antibiotic use in the previous year as well as any earlier years for which Geisinger had records.
At age 15, children, who had taken antibiotics seven or more times during childhood, weighed about three pounds more than those who received no antibiotics, they found. Approximately 21 per cent of the kids in the study, or almost 30,000 children, had received seven or more prescriptions during childhood.
Source: www.futurity.org
