Researchers Link Antibiotic Use to Juvenile Arthritis

Researchers from the Rutgers University, the University of Pennsylvania and Nemours A.I. duPont Hospital for Children say taking antibiotics may increase the risk that a child will develop juvenile arthritis.

According to the study published in July 20 in Pediatrics, the scientists found that children who were prescribed antibiotics had twice the risk of developing juvenile arthritis compared to children the same age who were not prescribed antibiotics. The more courses of antibiotics prescribed, the higher the associated risk. The study was obtained by MedicalXpress.com.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that between 4,300 and 9,700 children under the age of 16 are diagnosed with juvenile arthritis a year. The condition is a form of autoimmune disease which involves chronic inflammation of the joints and eyes that can cause pain, vision loss and disability. Only one-quarter of juvenile arthritis cases are caused by genetics, which means environmental triggers may play an important role in the onset of the disease, MedicalXpress.com reports.

The overuse of antibiotics may, too, be a cause. Previous studies found that only about half of antibiotics prescribed for acute respiratory infections are actually necessary. “Our research suggests another possible reason to avoid antibiotic overuse for infections that would otherwise get better on their own,” said Daniel Horton, a postdoctoral research fellow working in the Department of Pediatrics at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and also a lead author of the study, according to MedicalXpress.com.

For the study, which began in 2014, researchers examined previous studies that showed antibiotics could predispose children to develop other chronic diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Antibiotics can disrupt microbial communities in the intestines and elsewhere, and this disruption plays a role in IBD, as well as rheumatoid arthritis and other chronic conditions, MedicalXpress.com reported.

The researchers used The Health Improvement Network (THIN) – a database of over 11 million people across the United Kingdom (U.K.) – and compared children with newly diagnosed juvenile arthritis with age- and gender-matched controls. Of the roughly 450,000 children studied, 152 were diagnosed with juvenile arthritis. After researchers adjusted for other autoimmune conditions and previous infection, youngsters who received prescriptions for antibiotics were found to have a higher risk of developing juvenile arthritis, according to MedicalXpress.com.

A stronger association was found between upper respiratory tract infections treated with antibiotics and juvenile arthritis infections that were untreated. The researchers also noted that antiviral and antifungal drugs were not linked to juvenile arthritis, suggesting that risk for arthritis was specific to antibacterial medicines, MedicalXpress.com reports.

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