A study published yesterday (April 27) in Pediatrics finds that children who received a course of antibiotics during the first two years of life had diminished immune responses to four common vaccines. Researchers tell Science News that the findings are a cautionary tale about overusing antibiotics.
Babies are typically immunized against various diseases in the first six months of life and get boosters in their second year. From 2000 to 2016, the study’s authors collected blood samples from 560 children ages 6 to 24 months during routine visits with their pediatricians, measuring antibody levels after the children received polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis, Haemophilus influenzae type b, and pneumococcal vaccines.
Of these children, 342 had collectively been prescribed close to 1,700 courses of antibiotics. The other 218 children had not received antibiotics. The team analyzed whether antibody levels induced by the four vaccines met the threshold of what is considered protective and found ...
