Nappy rash and antibiotics

Antibiotics often trigger diarrhoea, which causes two kinds of nappy rash: contact dermatitis from the stool and secondary thrush from the gut. The result is not pretty, and you’re usually left with a very unhappy baby.

“Antibiotics kill 80 percent of the healthy bugs in your baby’s gut, which leaves the fungus with no competition, so it grows freely, resulting in thrush.

“A child with recurrent thrush who is on antibiotics should be on an anti-fungal too,” maintains Dr Paul Sinclair, a Cape Town paediatrician. While there isn’t hard evidence that probiotics reduce thrush and nappy rashes, lots of parents use them as they’ve been shown to reduce the severity of antibiotic-induced diarrhoea.

“Some parents even use a topical roll-on probiotic cream in the nappy area,” he says.