According to a new study, children who are given antibiotics seem to gain weight more quickly compared to those who do not take them. Additionally, weight gain in antibiotic medicated children has been found to be cumulative and progressive.
The study, published in the International Journal of Obesity, was conducted with approximately 164,000 children in Pennsylvania. The results show that teenagers at age 15, who had been prescribed antibiotics seven or more times in their childhood, weighed about 3 pounds more than those who didn't take these medicines.
"Antibiotics at any age contribute to weight gain," said Brian S. Schwartz, a physician and epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and lead author of the study, according to Fox News.
"Your BMI (an estimate of body fat) may be forever altered by the antibiotics you take as a child. Our data suggest that every time we give an antibiotic to kids they gain weight faster over time. While the magnitude of the weight increase attributable to antibiotics may be modest by the end of childhood, our finding that the effects are cumulative raises the possibility that these effects continue and are compounded into adulthood," Schwartz said according to Health.
It needs to be kept in mind that the study showed only an association, and not cause-and-effect relationship, between antibiotic use and weight gain.
Children, aged three to 18, enrolled in Pennsylvania's Geisinger Health System between 2001 and 2012 were studied by Schwartz's team. The data used for the research included body-mass index, antibiotic use, race, sex and other factors. The researchers were able to establish a BMI trajectory for children who didn't get antibiotics and compared it the BMI trajectory with those who did, reports the Wall Street Journal.
