Antibiotics ‘raise risk of obesity in toddlers’

BABIES given antibiotics in their first six months are more likely to become fat toddlers, a large-scale study has found.

Researchers said the widely prescribed drugs could be contributing to the obesity epidemic.

A third of those aged ten or 11 and more than a fifth of four to five-year- olds in England are overweight or obese, leading to fears they will be the first generation to die at an earlier age than their parents.

Scientists in Finland compared the weight and height of more than 12,000 healthy two-year-olds with prescription records. One in five boys and one in ten girls was overweight or obese.

Children who had taken antibiotics as young babies were particularly likely to be overweight. Repeated prescriptions before the age of two also raised the odds of being a fat toddler.

Boys who had been given antibiotics seemed particularly prone to weight gain.

The study, in the respected medical journal Pediatrics, did not conclusively prove that antibiotics were causing weight gain.

But if the drugs do have such an effect, it may be because they kill off bugs in the gut that would normally use up some of the food a person eats. Killing certain gut bugs may also increase appetite.

Lead author Dr Antti Saari, of Kuopio University Hospital, warned: ‘Antibiotic exposure before six months of age, or repeatedly during infancy, was associated with increased body mass in healthy children.

‘Such effects may play a role in the worldwide childhood obesity epidemic … An increase in the use of antibiotics could be an additional contributing factor to the development of excess weight problems … their extended use today has undesirable and unexpected consequences.’

It comes amid growing concern over-prescription is leading to antibiotics losing their power, making infections harder to treat.

Dr Martin Ward-Platt, of the Royal College of Paediatrics, said the study was ‘striking’. He said recent guidance to prescribe antibiotics more to very young babies could unwittingly further increase childhood obesity rates.