Can antibiotics make kids fat?

WE’VE been told to cut down on antibiotics to stem drug resistance — now there’s another reason: they may raise the risk of obesity in children. For a study reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology, researchers weighed more than 40,000 children who did not take medication and quizzed their mothers on antibiotic use in pregnancy.

The children born to mothers who took two or three courses were 22 per cent more at risk of obesity by the age of seven; if they took four courses or more, this jumped to 34 per cent.

It’s thought antibiotics destroy ‘good’ bacteria in the gut that help break down foods and control how much is stored as fat. ‘Children are prone to these effects as their metabolisms are developing,’ says Dr Samuli Rautava, a paediatrician at Turku University Hospital, Finland. Some experts aren’t convinced. ‘The study shows an association between antibiotics and obesity — not cause and effect,’ says Naveed Sattar, a professor of metabolic medicine at the University of Glasgow. ‘Even if this is right, the risks to your child from an acute illness are much greater than becoming overweight.’