Neonatal antibiotic exposure impairs growth in male children, Finds study
Some babies are given antibiotics to treat suspected bacterial infections and to prevent sepsis during neonatal period.
The researchers from the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine, Bar Ilan University, Safed, Israel, and scientists from Finland have found in a new study that neonatal antibiotic exposure is associated with a long-term gut microbiome perturbation and may result in reduced growth in boys during the first six years of life while antibiotic use later in childhood is associated with increased body mass index, as published in the Nature Communications.
Exposure to antibiotics in the first days of life is thought to affect various physiological aspects of neonatal development. Neonates subjected to antibiotic therapy reportedly exhibit altered gut microbiome composition during the first weeks of life5, but the clinical or microbiological long-term consequences of this exposure remain unknown.
Hence, Atara Uzan-Yulzari and colleagues conducted this study to investigate the long-term impact of antibiotic treatment in the neonatal period and early childhood on child growth in an unselected birth cohort of 12,422 children born at full term.
Significant attenuation of weight and height gain during the first 6 years of life after neonatal antibiotic exposure was found in boys, but not in girls, after adjusting for potential confounders. In contrast, antibiotic use after the neonatal period but during the first 6 years of life is associated with significantly higher body mass index throughout the study period in both boys and girls, the authors described.
The study results showed that neonatal antibiotic exposure is associated with significant differences in the gut microbiome, particularly in decreased abundance and diversity of fecal Bifidobacteria until 2 years of age. Finally, it was also demonstrated that fecal microbiota transplant from antibiotic-exposed children to germ-free male, but not female, mice results in significant growth impairment.
Therefore, they concluded that "neonatal antibiotic exposure is associated with a long-term gut microbiome perturbation and may result in reduced growth in boys during the first six years of life while antibiotic use later in childhood is associated with increased body mass index."
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DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20495-4
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