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Antibiotic use and childhood body mass index trajectory

International Journal of Obesity volume 40, pages 615–621 (2016)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Background/Objectives:

Antibiotics are commonly prescribed for children. Use of antibiotics early in life has been linked to weight gain but there are no large-scale, population-based, longitudinal studies of the full age range among mainly healthy children.

Subjects/Methods:

We used electronic health record data on 163 820 children aged 3–18 years and mixed effects linear regression to model associations of antibiotic orders with growth curve trajectories of annual body mass index (BMI) controlling for confounders. Models evaluated three kinds of antibiotic associations—reversible (time-varying indicator for an order in year before each BMI), persistent (time-varying cumulative orders up to BMIj) and progressive (cumulative orders up to prior BMI (BMIj-1))—and whether these varied by age.

Results:

Among 142 824 children under care in the prior year, a reversible association was observed and this short-term BMI gain was modified by age (P<0.001); effect size peaked in mid-teen years. A persistent association was observed and this association was stronger with increasing age (P<0.001). The addition of the progressive association among children with at least three BMIs (n=79 752) revealed that higher cumulative orders were associated with progressive weight gain; this did not vary by age. Among children with an antibiotic order in the prior year and at least seven lifetime orders, antibiotics (all classes combined) were associated with an average weight gain of approximately 1.4 kg at age 15 years. When antibiotic classes were evaluated separately, the largest weight gain at 15 years was associated with macrolide use.

Conclusions:

We found evidence of reversible, persistent and progressive effects of antibiotic use on BMI trajectories, with different effects by age, among mainly healthy children. The results suggest that antibiotic use may influence weight gain throughout childhood and not just during the earliest years as has been the primary focus of most prior studies.

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Acknowledgements

The project described was supported by Grant Number U54 HD-070725 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD). The project is co-funded by the NICHD and the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA,

    B S Schwartz & J Pollak

  2. Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA,

    B S Schwartz, A M Kress & T A Glass

  3. Department of Medicine, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA,

    B S Schwartz & S E Cosgrove

  4. Center for Health Research, Geisinger Health System, Danville, PA, USA

    B S Schwartz, L Bailey-Davis & A G Hirsch

  5. Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA,

    C Nau

  6. Department of Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA,

    K Bandeen-Roche

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Correspondence to B S Schwartz.

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Schwartz, B., Pollak, J., Bailey-Davis, L. et al. Antibiotic use and childhood body mass index trajectory. Int J Obes 40, 615–621 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2015.218

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