A study published by Genome Medicine has shown that antibiotic usage in young animals increases their likelihood of developing inflammatory bowel disease when they are older.
This evidence furthers supports the idea that using antibiotics in children under the age of one disrupts the gut microbiome. A healthy gut microbiome is essential for a healthy immune system and the prevention of disease.
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This study provides experimental evidence strengthening the idea that the associations of antibiotic exposures to the later development of disease in human children are more than correlations, but that they are actually playing roles in the disease causation.
-Study co-author Martin Blaser, director of the Rutgers Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine.
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Researches examined the effects of dextran sulfate, a chemical that injures the colon, in mice that received antibiotics, mice that had disrupted microbial contents transplanted into their intestine, and a control group. The results showed that the mice who received antibiotics or disrupted microbial contents had noticeably worse colitis than those in the control group.
This study is a continuation of Martin Blaser’s hypothesis that disrupting the microbiome early in life is one of the large factors in modern epidemics.