Infant antibiotic use linked to adult diseases

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://discover.umn.edu/news/science-technology/infant-antibiotic-use-linked-adult-diseases

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Infant antibiotic use linked to adult diseases[/font]

[font size=4]New study may lead to recommendations for antibiotic usage and a clinical test for measuring gut microbe development in children[/font]

May 13, 2015

[font size=3]A new study led by researchers at the University of Minnesota has found a three-way link among antibiotic use in infants, changes in the gut bacteria, and disease later in life. The imbalances in gut microbes, called dysbiosis, have been tied to infectious diseases, allergies and other autoimmune disorders, and even obesity, later in life.

The study, led by Biomedical Informatics and Computational Biology program graduate student fellow Pajau Vangay, also developed a predictive model with potential clinical importance for measuring healthy development of bacteria in the gut of young children. The findings were published today in the scientific journal Cell Host & Microbe.

Antibiotics are by far the most common prescription drugs given to children. They account for about one-fourth of all medications prescribed to children, with a third of these prescriptions considered unnecessary. Other studies have shown profound short- and long-term effects of antibiotics on the diversity and composition of the bacteria in our bodies, called our microbiome.

“Diseases related to metabolism and the immune system are increasing dramatically, and in many cases we don’t know why,” said the study’s senior author Dan Knights, a computational biologist and assistant professor in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering and Biotechnology Institute. “Previous studies showed links between antibiotic use and unbalanced gut bacteria, and others showed links between unbalanced gut bacteria and adult disease. Over the past year we synthesized hundreds of studies and found evidence of strong correlations between antibiotic use, changes in gut bacteria, and disease in adulthood.”

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[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. So perhaps after you wipe out a kid's intestinal flora via a course of antibiotics

you need to proactively re-establish it afterwards?

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. I’m all in favor of probiotic use with antibiotic use, however,

Humans have over 400 different bacterial species in our guts.

I’m skeptical of our ability to re-establish such a complex ecosystem. (The typical pro-biotic supplement will have 5 or less species. The most I’ve ever seen in a supplement was like 20… maybe…)

[still_one]

3. As anything it depends on the infection. Antibiotics should not be given for viral infections, but

if an infant has bacterial meningitis or other serious bacterial infection, you have to treat it with a suitable antibiotic, or you will never have the opportunity to worry about flora in the GI track of the infant, they won't make it into adulthood.

[jkbRN]

4. ++

[SheilaT]

5. One problem is that doctors all too often give in to

parental pressure and give antibiotics when they know perfectly well they're not warranted. Antibiotics are truly life-saving, but there's absolutely no point in prescribing them for viral infections.