Monday, June 25, 2007

Antibiotic Use Linked to Peds Asthma

Just when I thought I was running out of things to be angry about.,..

From the IHT:

The use of antibiotics in the first year of life is associated with an increased risk for asthma at age 7, a new study has found, and the reason may be that antibiotics destroy not only disease-causing microbes, but also those that are helpful to the developing immune system.

Antibiotic use had a greater impact on children who would otherwise be considered at lower risk — children who lived in rural areas and those whose mothers did not have asthma — than on those who were already at increased risk because of an urban environment or genetic predisposition.


More here.

1 comment:

runcyclexcski said...

Please note that there is also an infectious asthma theory by Dr Hahn. Some people (adults, not chilldren) have had success with long-term tratment of asthma with azythromycin. more details are on www.asthmastory.com

Every study has to be viewed in context, and one should not jump to conclusion. What's true in one study/for a certain group of people may not be true for another. Honestly, I did not read the original paper of the study you posted about, but usually correlations between two phenomena do not suggest a cause-and-effect relationship (i.e. atibiotics_in_childhood -> asthma_development is not necessarily a valid conclusion here).

runcyclexcski, Ph D, Lawerence Berkeley National Labs