Too many antibiotics can give you irritable bowel disease, says this study

From wrecking your immunity to impacting your kidneys –antibiotics can be lethal for your health. Yes, there is no denying that at times there is no other option but to pop one, but you need to consider the number of pills you are consuming. Why are we saying so? Well, because of this recent study on antibiotics.   

The study led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and Harvard Medical School in the United States, and published in the journal ‘The Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology’, talked about the association between antimicrobial treatment and irritable bowel disease (IBD).

Too much of antibiotics can give rise to an all new bowel problem for you  
Yes, you read that right. A team of researchers discovered that the use of antibiotics with a greater spectrum of microbial coverage may be associated with an increased risk of new-onset inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and its subtypes ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease.

IBD is becoming more common, particularly in Europe, the US, and other parts of the world undergoing rapid economic development, increased sanitation, and more frequent use of antibiotics. With a growing appreciation for the gut microbiome’s role in maintaining human health, concern has risen that antibiotics may perturb and permanently alter these fragile microbial communities. This could potentially impact the risk of gastrointestinal disease.

“I think this affirms what many of us have suspected–that antibiotics, which adversely affect gut microbial communities, are a risk factor for IBD,” said lead author, Dr Long Nguyen at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, US. “However, despite this compelling rationale and seemingly intuitive presumption, there have been no population-scale investigations to support this hypothesis until now.”

Through the Epidemiology Strengthened by histoPathology Reports in Sweden (ESPRESSO) study, the researchers identified almost 24,000 new IBD cases (16,000 had ulcerative colitis and 8,000 Crohn’s disease) and compared them with 28,000 siblings, and 117,000 controls from the general population. Prior use of antibiotics (never vs. ever) was associated with a nearly two-times increased risk of IBD after adjusting for several risk factors. The increased risk was noted for both ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease with the highest estimates corresponding to broad-spectrum antibiotics.

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According to the researchers, earlier studies in the field have been small, and few have had a follow-up beyond a few years. In contrast, the researchers in this study were able to enroll all consecutive, eligible patients with new-onset IBD from a population-based register over a ten-year study period, limiting selection bias.

“In Sweden, there is universal medication coverage with virtually complete information on all drug dispensations, including antibiotics, minimizing ascertainment bias,” said senior author, Professor Jonas F Ludvigsson, a pediatrician at Orebro University Hospital, and professor at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet. “This makes Swedish registers ideal for the study of risk factors for IBD.”

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“To identify risk factors for IBD is important, and ultimately our aim is to prevent the disease,” Ludvigsson added. “Our study provides another piece of the puzzle and even more reason to avoid using antibiotics needlessly.”

(With inputs from ANI)