An article in Reuters, June 2007 said that according to new research, giving infants less than one-year-old antibiotics for a non-respiratory tract infection would greatly increase the child’s chances of developing asthma. The June issue of the journal Chest, the peer-reviewed journal of the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP), contains the published findings of the study.

Not surprisingly, the study found that infants who received multiple courses of antibiotics and infants receiving broad-spectrum antibiotics were at the highest risk of developing asthma. Broad-spectrum antibiotics tend to kill both good and bad bacteria, which Kozyrskyi hypothesized, may be an initiator of the problem, killing off too many good bacteria. Anita Kozyrskyj, PhD, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, further considered that good bacteria might be especially necessary during the first year of life for the immune system to develop correctly. However, that cannot happen if antibiotics are killing off the natural micro flora in the gut.

Approximately 14 million school days are missed each year according to the American Lung Association due to active asthma in approximately 4 million American children. Researchers tend to focus on the development of the disease because asthma can't be cured today, only controlled.

Almost 14,000 children were followed for the study, from their births in 1995 until 2003 when all had reached the age of 7 years. Manitoba Health Services Insurance Program provided the data for the study, which included physician visits, prescriptions, hospitalizations, and health diagnoses. The parents of these children completed surveys about home and environmental exposures as well. Researchers also checked to see if the mothers of the children in the study had a history of asthma and five percent did.

The children were all from Manitoba, one of Canada's 10 provinces; and equally divided between male and female, with 90 percent having siblings and 57 percent living in urban areas. Children from low-income families were one-quarter of those studied. Researchers found that six percent of the total study group developed asthma by seven years old.

Of the nearly 14,000 children studied, two-thirds had at least one prescription for an antibiotic during the first year of life and many were for broad-spectrum antibiotics. The chances of the children acquiring asthma increased dramatically by how many courses of antibiotics they received. There was a 21 percent increase in the risk of asthma for those who received one to two courses of antibiotics. A 30 percent increase in risk for those who had three or four courses of antibiotics; and a 46 percent increased risk of asthma for youngsters given more than four prescribed courses of antibiotics.

One doctor suggested that parents not push for antibiotics for their sick children. However, he also said that if your child has a serious infection that needs to be treated with antibiotics, don’t worry about the asthma risk. He recommended that doctors begin treatment for their youngest patients by prescribing narrow-spectrum antibiotics, such as amoxicillin and only try broad-spectrum medications when necessary.

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