Study: Early, frequent antibiotic use linked to childhood obesity

Parents and pediatricians will often reach for antibiotics to treat middle-ear infections, strep throat, fevers and other common ailments of childhood. But new research suggests that doing so, and prescribing broad-spectrum antibiotics in particular, increases those children’s risk of obesity, at least in early childhood.

A new study finds that babies who got broad-spectrum antibiotics in their first two years of life, or who were prescribed four or more courses of antibiotics in that period, were more likely to be obese at some point between their second and fifth birthdays than were those who had taken no antibiotics, or who were treated with medications designed to target a narrow spectrum of disease-causing bacteria.