Food Allergies Linked to Early Childhood Antibiotic Treatments

Children exposed to 2 or more courses of antibiotics from birth to 1 year faces a significant chance of to acquire food allergies, presented at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology 2013 Annual Meeting.Drawing upon South Carolina Medicaid billing data of >1100 children with food allergies detected before 3 years old and 6433 control subjects. They matched cases and controls by birth year, sex, and race.Subjects in the 2 groups received a total 8046 courses of antibiotics, including penicillin (54%), cephalosporins (21%), macrolides (18%), and sulfonamides (7%).

"We believe it may be related to a disruption of normal gut flora," lead investigator Bryan Love, PharmD, from the South Carolina College of Pharmacy in Columbia, told Medscape Medical News."Systemic antibiotics not only kill bacteria causing an infection...[they] are also distributed to other parts of our body where they can kill susceptible bacteria that are part of our normal flora — especially in the gastrointestinal tract," Dr. Love explained.

Click to see Dr. Lubitz's explain food allergy testing and diagnosis.If you or a member of your family exhibits symptoms of food allergies - please feel free to contact my office for a consultation.Read the full Medscape Antibiotic Exposure in Infancy Linked to Food Allergies, here.