http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health/story.jsp?story=294171

Disease link to antibiotics in pregnancy

By Severin Carrell

12 May 2002

Children are much more at risk of getting asthma if their mothers take antibiotics during pregnancy, a major new study suggests.

The finding will increase suspicions that modern lifestyles and medicines are closely linked to the significant increase in the disease among children.

The number of children with asthma has grown six-fold in the last 25 years and it now affects 1.6m children in Britain ­ mirroring a surge in the use of antibiotics, household disinfectants and microbiological cleaners.

Many experts believe that increased use of medicines in early life, and increased cleanliness in homes, suppresses a child's immune system, making them more susceptible to allergies.

The new study, which will be unveiled at the American Thoracic Society's annual conference in Atlanta next week, is based on the GP records of nearly 25,000 children living in the West Midlands during the late 1990s.

Researchers at Nottingham University discovered that if mothers used antibiotics during pregnancy, the chances of their child becoming asthmatic grew by 43 per cent. The chances of a child later being diagnosed with hay fever grew by 38 per cent, and by 11 per cent for eczema.

The researchers are cautious about claiming they have proven a link between antibiotics and asthma, but these findings will intensify pressure on ministers from the National Asthma Society, which funded the West Midlands study, to greatly increase spending on asthma research.

Last week, the NAS revealed that every week, 7,000 children visit their GPs to be treated for asthma for the first time, and a child goes to hospital for an asthma attack every 16 minutes.

Dr Richard Hubbard, a chest doctor at the university's respiratory medicine unit, said the findings needed to be repeated by further research before a clear link was established. However, he said, the results increased the evidence linking exposure to infection to a child's chances to becoming asthmatic.

Antibiotics, he said, kill off the natural bacteria in the gut which help develop the immune system. "If you're exposed to more infection, that might make your immune system develop in a better way," he said.

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