Antibiotics in infancy may be linked to childhood obesity

Kids who receive several rounds of antibiotics before age two may be at an increased risk of being overweight by age five, suggests a new study. The research shows a link between antibiotics and obesity, but it can’t say whether the antibiotics are “at fault,” said Dr. L. Charles Bailey, the study’s lead author from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. For the new study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, Bailey and his co-authors used data from health records collected between 2001 and 2013 from 64,580 children. They had data on doctor visits during the children’s first five years of life.

One of the more interesting hypotheses is that your body’s management of its weight involves interacting with the bacteria that live in your intestines, and affect the way you digest food.

Dr. L. Charles Bailey, from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

Antibiotics kill some of the bacteria in the stomach and could leave the body in a state where it is more likely to become obese, Bailey said. The drugs could also change which foods taste good or change your activity pattern due to other side effects. Almost 70 percent of the kids were exposed to antibiotics before age two with an average of about two prescriptions per child. By age two, 23 percent of the kids were overweight or obese for their age, which rose to 30 percent at age three and 33 percent at age four. Obesity was specifically linked to broad-spectrum antibiotics, like amoxicillin or tetracycline.

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