Antibiotics And Weight Gain In Kids Are Co-Related

A new study shows that children consuming antibiotics gain weight faster than those who don't. Hence, weight gain in children who take antibiotics is "cumulative and progressive".

The study was conducted on 164,000 children in Pennsylvania. It showed that teenagers aged 15, who had taken the drugs seven or more times as children, exceeded others who did not take them, by 3 pounds.

"Antibiotics at any age contribute to weight gain," said Brian S. Schwartz, a physician and epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and lead author of the study, according to Fox News.

The children studied were aged three to 18, joined Pennsylvania's Geisinger Health System between 2001 and 2012 and were examined by Schwartz's team. The scientists used "body-mass index, antibiotic use, race, sex and other factors" in order to establish a BMI trajectory for children who didn't get antibiotics" and compared to the BMI trajectory of the others who did, reports The Wall Street Journal.

"Your BMI (an estimate of body fat) may be forever altered by the antibiotics you take as a child. Our data suggest that every time we give an antibiotic to kids they gain weight faster over time. While the magnitude of the weight increase attributable to antibiotics may be modest by the end of childhood, our finding that the effects are cumulative raises the possibility that these effects continue and are compounded into adulthood," Schwartz said according to Health.

However, there was just an "association", not a cause-and-effect linking between the two.

The study has been published in the International Journal of Obesity.