Children who regularly use antibiotics gain weight faster than those who do not, according to a recent study.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that antibiotics may have a compounding effect throughout childhood on body mass index (BMI), a measure often used to determine whether someone is at a healthy weight, UPI reported.
"Your BMI may be forever altered by the antibiotics you take as a child," Brian S. Schwartz, who led the study, said in a statement. "Our data suggest that every time we give an antibiotic to kids they gain weight faster over time."
For the study, researchers collected and analyzed data from nearly 164,000 children between 3 and 18 years old from Jan. 2001 to Feb. 2012, Fox News reported. They examined body weight and height (which are used to determine BMI) and antibiotic use in the previous year as well as any earlier years.
They found that at age 15, children who had taken antibiotics seven or more times during childhood weighed about three pounds more than those who received no antibiotics, they found. Approximately 21 percent of the kids in the study, or almost 30,000 children, had received seven or more prescriptions during childhood.
Prior studies had suggested that use in the youngest children may cause weight gain, but this study shows that use at any age during childhood contributes to weight gain that accelerates with age.
"Not only did antibiotics contribute to weight gain at all ages, but the contribution of antibiotics to weight gain gets stronger as you get older," Schwartz told The New York Times.
Schwartz says he thinks that physicians are becoming more judicious in their antibiotic prescribing, but it can be a difficult task. Often parents demand antibiotics for apparent cold viruses and other ailments that will not be helped by them.
The findings are detailed in the International Journal of Obesity.
