This is a very interesting article which points to a significant link between antibiotic use in early life and the development of Asthma later on.
The article doesn't mention specifically the mechanism by which this link is made, but I suspect that one of the reasons for this connection would be because of the destruction of the beneficial bacteria population in the bowel of the child, which normally would confer significant benefits to the immune system.
It has been shown that probiotics (the healthy bacteria normally present in the digestive tract) are able to stimulate the immune system directly, they also produce various substances that are beneficial to the immune system and provide a barrier against infection to a large degree. Other recent studies are showing a whole new understanding of the immune system and have been discovering that about 80% of our innate immunity actually comes from our gut. So when that barrier and the probiotic population is disrupted there are many different consequences.
Without probiotics, the person's immune defenses are much reduced, which explains why once kids get on an antibiotic taking cycle it is very hard to break, because they tend to get repeat infections over and over and require more and more antibiotics as their own immune defenses are not able to mount an effective immune response to overcome the infection themselves.
In addition the connection between development of Asthma and antibiotic use would suggest that the child's immune system is already very low, hence the development of other infections that would require antibiotic use in the first place. The weakened system, most likely due to nutritional deficiencies, would be more susceptible also to developing asthma later on, which has been shown in other studies to possibly be the result of nutritional deficiency.
In light of these findings, if your child has had to take antibiotics in the first year of life already, it is a good signal that you need to do some extra work to stimulate his immune system and provide additional nutritional support in order to overcome his natural weakness, which should help to prevent further diseases down the road.
Ensuring adequate intake of Vitamin's A and D as well as a general multi vitamin would be the first step. Then also replacing the child's probiotic poplulation which would have been disrupted due to antibiotic intake would be the second important step. Ensuring your child eats a healthy diet that is very limited in sugar and other refined carbohydrates would also help, as sugar and refined carbs have been shown to weaken the immune system considerably, and they also feed candida albicans growth which is a harmful yeast that also lives in the gut, but begins to take over, causing candida infection, when it has too much carbohydrate which it feeds on.
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Increased Risk of Childhood Asthma From Antibiotic Use in Early Life Anita L. Kozyrskyj, PhD; Pierre Ernst, MD and Allan B. Becker, MD
From the Faculty of Pharmacy (Dr. Kozyrskyj), University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada; the Division of Clinical Epidemiology (Dr. Ernst), Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal, QC, Canada; and the Department of Pediatrics and Child Health (Dr. Becker), Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada.
Correspondence to: Anita Kozyrskyj, PhD, 210 Pharmacy Building, Winnipeg, MB, Canada R3T 2N2; e-mail: kozyrsk@cc.umanitoba.ca
Abstract
Background : To address the major methodological issues of reverse causation and selection bias in epidemiologic studies of antibiotic use in early life and the development of asthma, we undertook a cohort study of this association in a complete population of children.
Methods : Using the health-care and prescription databases of Manitoba, Canada, this longitudinal study assessed the association between antibiotic prescription use during the first year of life and asthma at age 7 years in a 1995 birth cohort of 13,116 children.
Results : Independent of well-known asthma risk factors, asthma was significantly more likely to develop in children who had received antibiotics in the first year of life at age 7 years. The association with asthma was observed for antibiotic use in non-respiratory tract infections (adjusted odds ratio [OR], 1.86; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.02 to 3.37). The risk of asthma was highest in children receiving more than four courses of antibiotics (adjusted OR, 1.46; 95% CI, 1.14 to 1.88), especially among rural children, and in the absence of maternal asthma or a dog in the birth year. Broad-spectrum (BS) cephalosporin use was more common in these subpopulations of children.
Conclusions : Antibiotic use in early life was associated with the development of childhood asthma, a risk that may be reduced by avoiding the use of BS cephalosporins.
http://vran.org/health-risks/anaphylaxis-allergies-and-asthma/increased-risk-of-childhood-asthma-from-antibiotic-use-in-early-life/
The article doesn't mention specifically the mechanism by which this link is made, but I suspect that one of the reasons for this connection would be because of the destruction of the beneficial bacteria population in the bowel of the child, which normally would confer significant benefits to the immune system.
It has been shown that probiotics (the healthy bacteria normally present in the digestive tract) are able to stimulate the immune system directly, they also produce various substances that are beneficial to the immune system and provide a barrier against infection to a large degree. Other recent studies are showing a whole new understanding of the immune system and have been discovering that about 80% of our innate immunity actually comes from our gut. So when that barrier and the probiotic population is disrupted there are many different consequences.
Without probiotics, the person's immune defenses are much reduced, which explains why once kids get on an antibiotic taking cycle it is very hard to break, because they tend to get repeat infections over and over and require more and more antibiotics as their own immune defenses are not able to mount an effective immune response to overcome the infection themselves.
In addition the connection between development of Asthma and antibiotic use would suggest that the child's immune system is already very low, hence the development of other infections that would require antibiotic use in the first place. The weakened system, most likely due to nutritional deficiencies, would be more susceptible also to developing asthma later on, which has been shown in other studies to possibly be the result of nutritional deficiency.
In light of these findings, if your child has had to take antibiotics in the first year of life already, it is a good signal that you need to do some extra work to stimulate his immune system and provide additional nutritional support in order to overcome his natural weakness, which should help to prevent further diseases down the road.
Ensuring adequate intake of Vitamin's A and D as well as a general multi vitamin would be the first step. Then also replacing the child's probiotic poplulation which would have been disrupted due to antibiotic intake would be the second important step. Ensuring your child eats a healthy diet that is very limited in sugar and other refined carbohydrates would also help, as sugar and refined carbs have been shown to weaken the immune system considerably, and they also feed candida albicans growth which is a harmful yeast that also lives in the gut, but begins to take over, causing candida infection, when it has too much carbohydrate which it feeds on.
--------------
Increased Risk of Childhood Asthma From Antibiotic Use in Early Life Anita L. Kozyrskyj, PhD; Pierre Ernst, MD and Allan B. Becker, MD
From the Faculty of Pharmacy (Dr. Kozyrskyj), University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada; the Division of Clinical Epidemiology (Dr. Ernst), Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal, QC, Canada; and the Department of Pediatrics and Child Health (Dr. Becker), Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada.
Correspondence to: Anita Kozyrskyj, PhD, 210 Pharmacy Building, Winnipeg, MB, Canada R3T 2N2; e-mail: kozyrsk@cc.umanitoba.ca
Abstract
Background : To address the major methodological issues of reverse causation and selection bias in epidemiologic studies of antibiotic use in early life and the development of asthma, we undertook a cohort study of this association in a complete population of children.
Methods : Using the health-care and prescription databases of Manitoba, Canada, this longitudinal study assessed the association between antibiotic prescription use during the first year of life and asthma at age 7 years in a 1995 birth cohort of 13,116 children.
Results : Independent of well-known asthma risk factors, asthma was significantly more likely to develop in children who had received antibiotics in the first year of life at age 7 years. The association with asthma was observed for antibiotic use in non-respiratory tract infections (adjusted odds ratio [OR], 1.86; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.02 to 3.37). The risk of asthma was highest in children receiving more than four courses of antibiotics (adjusted OR, 1.46; 95% CI, 1.14 to 1.88), especially among rural children, and in the absence of maternal asthma or a dog in the birth year. Broad-spectrum (BS) cephalosporin use was more common in these subpopulations of children.
Conclusions : Antibiotic use in early life was associated with the development of childhood asthma, a risk that may be reduced by avoiding the use of BS cephalosporins.
http://vran.org/health-risks/anaphylaxis-allergies-and-asthma/increased-risk-of-childhood-asthma-from-antibiotic-use-in-early-life/
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