A new study based on more than 30 thousand children that has just been published in The Journal of Pediatrics notes that taking antibiotics in pregnancy carries an increased risk of asthma in the child.
It had already been found that taking antibiotics during the first year of life increases the risk of asthma in childhood, although it has been a single treatment. But it is the first time that it goes further and there is an association between antibiotics and asthma from the baby's own pregnancy.
The theory is based on the fact that antibiotics alter the bacterial flora of babies' organisms during pregnancy, modifying their immune system, which would trigger the onset of asthma.
The researchers found that about a quarter of the children were exposed to antibiotics while their mothers were pregnant. Of these, just over 3 percent (238 children) were hospitalized for asthma at the age of five. In comparison, 2.5 percent (581) of about 23,000 children whose mothers did not take antibiotics were hospitalized for asthma.
By ruling out other risk factors, they concluded that children who had been exposed to antibiotics in the womb were 17 percent more likely to be hospitalized for asthma. As the mother is a main source of the child's first bacterial colonization, the antibiotics she takes can cross the placenta and disrupt her normal bacterial flora.
This does not imply that pregnant women stop taking antibiotics when necessary, since there are infections that are very dangerous for the fetus, but only in those cases that are strictly necessary and always indicated by the doctor. We already know that antibiotics are sometimes misused to treat diseases that do not require treatment.
