Antibiotics while have saved many lives but when over used can have devastating affect on your gut bacteria.  The main problem with antibiotics is that they kill normal friendly bacteria within your gut as well as the one causing the infection.  Your child within the first seven years of their life develops a strong gut bacteria, antibiotic use before then the age of seven weakens the colonies of friendly gut bacteria before they have time to completely develop.  Friendly bacteria colonise your body and protect it, they are on the skin, and in openings such as the mouth, nose, and vagina, and also in the digestive system.  They have many functions to help with absorption of vitamins and they also prevent other pathogens setting up an infection.

Research has shown that in mice the common antibiotics used for children when used repeatedly shows multiple long lasting effects.   When female mice were treated with tylosin they gained more weight than untreated mice and the mice that were treated with amoxicillin developed larger bones effecting an increase in height, however both of these antibiotics disrupted the gut microbiome, that inhabit the intestinal tract.  A predisposition for obesity occurs when there is antibiotic exposure during early development as it disrupts the bacteria within the gut, which then permanently reprograms the body’s metabolism.  Dr Blaster from the NYU School of Medicine states “We have been using antibiotics as if there was no biological cost, the average child in the Untied States receives 10 courses of the drugs by the age of 10.”

Other information gained from the study include the number of doses are accumulative therefore the more doses the greater the effect on the gut microbes, the drugs altered the bacterial species and also the number of microbial genes that has specific metabolic functions.  Also the microbes that are exposed to antibiotics are less adaptable to environmental changes, this was noted when the researches moved the young mice onto a high fat day on day 41, the microbes of the mice that weren’t given the antibiotics shifted within a single day to adapt to the new conditions however the mice that have been given the amoxicillin could take up to two weeks to make the same transition, and the mice that had been given tylosin took up to months later to adapt to the high fat diet.

Reference:

Blaser, M, MD; Singer MG; Singer GW, NYU School of Medicine, Nature Communications June 30, 2015