Antibiotics: consuming too much increases obesity
According to an American study(1) relayed in the pages of Le Figaro, taking too many antibioticsbefore the age of twowould lead, subsequently, to a higher risk of being overweight. This process leading to obesity is currently unknown in France but is being observed thanks to this scientific study conducted in the Northeastern USA, in Pennsylvania.
The study appeared in theJournal of the Medical American Association.
Antibiotics, consequences
We already knew that taking this type of medication disrupted immune defenses, bacterial flora and participated inan addiction to substances of microbial origin.
For Dr. Charles Bayley, who works at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, “reducing the prevalence of the multiple causes that make the bed of obesity, depends on the identification and control of risk factors in their totality“. In fact, for him, the risk of becoming obese is even more marked if the childunder two yearsof age has been administered large doses of antibiotics.
Between 2001 and 2013, for the purposes of the experiment, researchers looked at the records of more than sixty-four thousand children under the age of five. In nearly 70% of cases, these children received more than double the recommended antibiotics before their 24th month. The results show that this increased use is one of the triggers of obesity. For the team working on these figures, the explanation would come from the fact that by ingesting these chemicals, the bacterial flora of the child under two years of age, would be disturbed. Thus, it is a normal assimilation of food that is to be deplored and, in a logical continuity of things, an overweight that would settle insidiously. The latter would be noted but too late, in the coming decades, when the diagnosis of morbid obesity would be made.
Deleterious effect of antibiotic therapy
Other meta-analyses confirm the deleterious effect of antibiotic therapy. Obesity has become a public health issue in all countries without exception. This is why scientific, university and government laboratories are devoting themselves to more and more detailed and numerous research to fight against this scourge. Because, it is necessary to recall, obesity is the first risk factor for death at the global level.
In Seattle, Washington, between the years 2000 and 2011, infections of the ENT sphere were screened to estimate the percentage of prescriptions related to antibiotic therapy in minors. The ear infections, sinusitis, bronchitis and other pharyngitis of our dear little ones have proven to be telling sources. Indeed, it emerges from this collective work, that general practitioners lack the means to make a correct diagnosis and a distinction, however useful, between viral infection and bacterial infection. Currently only the “StreptoTest”(2) makes the distinction.
The WHO (World Health Organization) has been sounding the alarm(3) for more than six months now! Especially since another study, this one in the UK(4), on the rate of failure in antibiotic therapy, shows that out of sixty million prescriptions, 15% failed.
Thus, concerning the misuse of antibiotics in children, all these recent studies confirm the absolute necessity of setting up principles of use for common pediatric pathologies.
The systematic prescription of antibiotics is far too widespread in children and raises the question of antibiotic resistancetag. Be that as it may, for the researchers at the Pennsylvania laboratory, this present study must be relayed, again and again, by others in future years in order to validate all these figures.
Stephen Paul is the lead author and founder of My Health Sponsor. Holder of a diploma in health and well-being coaching with more than 200 articles in the field of health, he makes it a point of honor to offer advice based on reliable information, based on scientific research, and verified by health professionals.