Asthma "not linked to early antibiotic use" The use of antibiotics in early childhood does not increase the risk of developing asthma, hay fever or eczema by the age of five, according to US research. Previous retrospective studies on children from England, New Zealand, Belgium and Germany have all suggested that those taking antibiotics during their early years may be more likely to develop asthma. However, the investigators in the latest research say this is coughing cat asthma and drug therapy not the case, and that the previous studies were affected by "recall bias".Researchers from Channing Laboratory in Boston, Massachusetts, studied 448 boys and girls who were born to parents where the mother or father, or both, had a history of allergy or asthma. Each child's doctor answered questionnaires on antibiotic prescribing and the number of attacks or episodes of wheezing by the child. The questionnaires were completed every two months until the child's second birthday, after which interviews were conducted asthma and drug therapy asthma and drug therapy every six months until the children were five.Variables, such as exposure to smoking in the home and parental history of allergic disease, were also taken into account. Although more than 70 per cent of the 448 children received around 750 courses of antibiotics during their first year of life, only 20 per cent developed an atopic disease - an allergy to which one has an inherited tendency - by the age of five. Of these, less than half had received bronchial asthma treatment asthma and drug therapy two or more courses of antibiotics during their first year.The researchers, who published their findings in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, concluded that there was no significant association between early antibiotic use and the development of asthma, hay fever or eczema by the age of five.However, the researchers did find evidence of an antibiotic being prescribed and two or more episodes of wheezing in the first year of life - a finding, they say, which could child athletes with asthma asthma and drug therapy explain previous
