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Updated: Oct 7, 2025

Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction-based Analyses of Murine Intestinal Microbiota After Oral Antibiotic Treatment
08:33

Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction-based Analyses of Murine Intestinal Microbiota After Oral Antibiotic Treatment

Published on: November 17, 2018

13.2K

Antibiotics prior to age 2 years have limited association with preschool growth trajectory

L Charles Bailey1,2, Matthew Bryan3,4, Mitchell Maltenfort3

  • 1Departments of Pediatrics and Biomedical and Health Informatics, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA. baileyc@chop.edu.

International Journal of Obesity (2005)
|January 9, 2022
PubMed

Insights

Early antibiotic use in children showed a minimal impact on growth rates between ages 2-5 years. This finding suggests that the effects of early antibiotic exposure on child growth are very small.

Area of Science:

  • Pediatric growth and development
  • Pharmacology and therapeutics
  • Epidemiology and public health

Background:

  • Previous research on early antibiotic exposure and child growth yielded inconsistent results, often based on cross-sectional data.
  • The impact of early oral antibiotic use on long-term growth trajectories remains incompletely understood.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the effect of oral antibiotic prescriptions before 24 months of age on growth trajectories from 2 to 5 years.
  • To analyze the association between early antibiotic exposure and longitudinal growth rates in young children.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized electronic health records from PCORnet for a large cohort of children with specified height and weight data.
  • Oral antibiotic prescriptions were categorized by episode and antimicrobial spectrum.
  • Longitudinal rate regression models adjusted for covariates assessed growth rate differences from 25 to 72 months.

Main Results:

  • Inclusion of 430,376 children, with 58% receiving antibiotics before 24 months.
  • Exposure to any antibiotic was linked to a 0.7% greater average rate of weight gain (0.05 kg additional weight).
  • Narrow-spectrum antibiotics showed a slightly greater effect on weight gain than broad-spectrum ones, with a dose-response relationship observed.

Conclusions:

  • Oral antibiotic use before 24 months was associated with minor average changes in growth rate between ages 2-5 years.
  • The small effect size is unlikely to influence individual clinical prescribing decisions but may indicate a subtle biological effect.
Abstract

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