(credit: Ravedave)
For decades, farmers have known that the quickest way to fatten up young, healthy livestock is to feed them antibiotics—the drugs will even plump animals on a diet. It’s unclear why the practice, called growth promotion, works. Scientists have a range of hypotheses, including that the drugs may kill off gut microbes that compete for calories or knock back mild infections that would otherwise take energy to fight off. Whatever the answer, one thing is certain: growth promotion spurs drug-resistance in bacteria. And with the rise of infections from such superbugs in people—a major threat to public health—the practice is now squarely discouraged.
Yet, despite the long-held practice in farms, researchers are just beginning to harvest data on whether the drugs have the same effect on human babies in clinics. So far, much of the data—but not all—shows some concerning similarities.
Looking at a population-representative sample of nearly 22,000 children in the United Kingdom, researchers found that giving children three or more antibiotics within the first two years of life modestly increased the likelihood that they would be obese at age four. The study, being published in Gastroenterology, follows several smaller studies that hinted at such a connection, particularly for antibiotics used in the first six months of life.
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