Antibiotics Cause Diabetes & Obesity in Children

Treating children with antibiotics can cause the development of obesity and diabetes. The researchers found that antibiotics are harmful to the child’s intestinal bacteria.

The scientists from the University of New York have found that the children taking antibiotics can get obesity because of the negative effects of these drugs on the “good” bacteria in the intestine. This conclusion was obtained due to the experiment on mice. It turned out that if the little mice received the drug usually given to children, their bones increased in size and excess weight appeared.

The study published in the Nature Communications journal is based on the last year’s health analysis of 64,500 children. It showed that the children taking antibiotics at least four times before the age of two years often suffered from the development of obesity at the age of five. The researchers subjected the mice to short courses of two most common antibiotics among children in the same therapeutic doses that a kid receives during the first two years of life.

The author of the study Professor Martin Blaser said that although the experiments were conducted only on rodents, their findings fully correspond to the views of a number of other scientists about the harm the use of antibiotics causes to children. According to doctors, these drugs should be used only in extreme cases when such form of treatment is fully justified. After taking antibiotics, the children should be given drugs to restore the intestinal microflora.