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Antibiotics use dramatically raises risk
of asthma in infants; pet dogs cut risk by 50 percent
Using antibiotics in the first year of life may significantly
increase a child's risk of contracting asthma by age
7, according to a study conducted by researchers at
University of Manitoba and McGill University in Montreal
and published in "CHEST," the journal of
the American College of Chest Physicians.
The researchers examined a prescription database that
included information on 13,116 children and compared
incidence of asthma with a variety of risk factors,
including antibiotic use, gender, maternal asthma history,
living location, neighborhood income, the presence
of pets in the home and the number of siblings at the
age of seven.
The study concluded that those who had received antibiotics
for the treatment of a non-respiratory tract infection
in their first year were twice as likely to suffer
from asthma at the age of seven than those who had
not. The higher the number of treatments, the higher
the child's risk of asthma.
Eighty-seven percent of children who had received
antibiotics were treated for respiratory tract infections.
Because respiratory tract infections early in life
may be a sign of developing asthma, however, the researchers
excluded these cases from the sample in order to be
sure the effect they were observing was related only
to the antibiotics.
The researchers also found that maternal history of
asthma significantly increased a child's risk of the
disease. The presence of the dog in the house during
the first year of life, however, led to a reduced risk
of contracting asthma. Among children who received
multiple treatments with antibiotics, those with the
dog in the house suffered half the asthma risk of those
without.
"Dogs bring germs into the home, and it is thought
that this exposure is required for the infant's immune
system to develop normally. Other research has shown
that the presence of a dog in early life protects against
the development of asthma," said lead researcher
Anita Kozyrskyj. |
