Antibiotics in infancy may lead to childhood allergies

Monday, 17 January 2011 11:26

Findings in a cohort of more than 1,400 children in the United States show exposure to antibiotics by the age of 6 months was associated with asthma and allergy at 6 years of age. The adverse effect of antibiotics was particularly strong in children with no family history of asthma.

The authors note that respiratory tract infections in small children may be difficult to distinguish from early symptoms of asthma, and this may cause some ‘protopathic’ bias, where antibiotics are used to treat early symptoms of asthma. However, findings from this study indicate that protopathic bias was unlikely to account for the main findings.

Reference: Risnes et al. 2010. American Journal of Epidemiology. DOI: 10.1093/aje/kwq400