Early use of antibiotics in infancy and pediatric obesity: A systematic review of the literature

Abstract

Introduction: Prevalence of obesity in the world is increasing and specifically obesity in children has become a public health problem concerning several countries. Evidence has pointed to the use of antibiotics in childhood as a factor related to the presence of childhood obesity. Objective: To analyse evidence about the relationship between the early use of antibiotics in childhood and childhood obesity. Methods: A literature search was carried out on scientific databases, such as Pubmed, Ovid, EBSCO, Lilacs, JAMA pediatrics of observacional studies published in the last ten years assessing the relationship between the use of antibiotics before 24 months of age and pediatric obesity. Results: Nine of the articles were selected for the qualitative synthesis. With two exceptions, the analyzed studies show a statistically significant relationship between the early use of antibiotics and childhood obesity or overweight, measured as weight for age or through the body mass index and even with the adjustment for potential confounding variables, this association remains statistically significant, due to some of the epidemiological designs, the relationship of temporal antecedence of the exposure can not be verified.