New study links antibiotic use to overweight in children

A new study by AllerGen researchers has shown that children treated with antibiotics in the first year of life are more than twice as likely to be overweight later in childhood compared to children who were unexposed.

The study, published online in the International Journal of Obesity, linked provincial health records of antibiotic use with data from 616 children involved in a longitudinal birth cohort study. It found that 32.4% of children who received antibiotics in the first year of life were overweight by age 12 compared to 18.2% of children who did not receive antibiotics.

The study involved the work of AllerGen researchers Drs Anita Kozyrskyj, Meghan Azad and Sarah Bridgman (University of Alberta), and Dr. Allan Becker (University of Manitoba), using data from the Study of Asthma, Genes and the Environment (SAGE) birth cohort.

While antibiotic use during infancy increased the risk for overweight in all children, a strong association remained in boys but not girls after maternal overweight and other pregnancy factors were taken into account, according to the study’s authors.

“Our results are consistent with research that shows a stronger intrauterine effect of pregnancy overweight on daughters than sons, but of a stronger postnatal environmental influence on sons than daughters,” explains Dr. Kozyrskyj.

“Given the current epidemic of childhood obesity and the relatively frequent prescription of antibiotics for infants, this is a promising area for further research,” says Dr. Azad, first author of the publication. “Next, we would like to study the role of gut microbes in this process: antibiotic use during infancy may cause disruption of the gut microbiota during a critical period of development, with negative consequences for metabolism and weight gain later in life. We will be curious to learn whether antibiotics have gender-specific effects on gut microbes.”

To further this work, the research team has recently been awarded a $100,000 grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHER)-Human Development, Child and Youth Health Institute.