Antibiotics Linked To Huge Rise In Allergies

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Antibiotics Linked To Huge Rise In Allergies

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Health Antibiotics Linked To Huge Rise In Allergies

Editors Comment: The February 18, 2004 issue of the Journal of the

American

Medical Association (291(7):827-35) stated that antibiotic use is

associated

with an increased risk of breast cancer, according to a study, and

the more

antibiotics used the more the risk of breast cancer increased.

The study of more than 10,000 women found that women who took

antibiotics for

more than 500 days–or had more than 25 prescriptions–over an average

period of

17 years had more than twice the risk of breast cancer as women who

had not

taken any antibiotics. Scary stuff since exposure to antibiotics is

so

prevalent, and often unnecessary.

The JAMA (1998;279:875-877, 881-882) also states that nearly half of

children

seen by physicians for treatment of a common cold leave their

doctors' offices

with unnecessary prescriptions for antibiotics. Bacteria-fighting

antibiotics

are useless against colds, the vast majority of which are caused by

viruses.

——————————————-

Antibiotics Linked To Huge Rise In Allergies

The increasing use of antibiotics to treat disease may be

responsible for the

rising rates of asthma and allergies. By upsetting the body's normal

balance of

gut microbes, antibiotics may prevent our immune system from

distinguishing

between harmless chemicals and real attacks.

" The microbial gut flora is an arm of the immune system, " says

Huffnagle at

the University of Michigan in Ann Arbour. His research group has

provided the

first experimental evidence in mice that upsetting the gut flora can

provoke an

allergic response.

Asthma has increased by around 160 per cent globally in the last 20

years.

Currently about a quarter of schoolchildren in the US and a third of

those in

the UK have the condition, but pinning down the causes of the rise

has proved

difficult. Some researchers have blamed modern dust-free homes,

while others

have pointed to diet.

Antibiotics have been implicated by some epidemiological studies.

For example,

the rise in allergies and asthma has tracked widespread antibiotic

use.

Furthermore, research in Berlin, Germany, has found that both

antibiotic

treatment and asthma were low in the east compared to the west when

the wall

came down.

As antibiotic use has increased in the east though, so has asthma.

This study is

particularly valuable because the politically divided populations

were

genetically very similar and enjoyed much the same menu.

Fungal spores

Now Huffnagle has presented experimental evidence to back up the

case. His team

gave mice a course of antibiotics before feeding some of them with a

yeast which

is commonly found on human skin.

With the natural gut bacteria suppressed by the drugs, the yeast

became

established in the mouse, with no side effects. Over the course of

the following

two weeks, the researchers treated all the mice with spores from a

common

fungus. Again, this does not cause disease, but fungal spores can

trigger

allergies in people.

The mice whose gut flora had been manipulated, experienced a much

higher immune

response to the spores, suggesting that changes to the collection of

microbes in

people's guts following antibiotic treatment might also make us more

susceptible

to allergies. " Suddenly, your ability to ignore a mould spore has

gone, "

Huffnagle told New Scientist.

The team has repeated the experiments with a second strain of mice

to show that

the effect is not dependent on a particular set of mouse genes. They

have also

used a different molecule to produce the allergic response - an egg

protein from

chickens called ovalbumin that is commonly used in allergy research.

In this case, when the team looked at the animals' lung linings

under a

microscope the effect of the over-active immune response was

striking. " Their

lungs are shredded, absolutely shredded. I'm sure they can't

breath, " says

Huffnagle.

Training regime

He speculates that our gut bacteria are somehow involved in training

the immune

system to ignore harmless molecules that wind up in our stomach.

Precisely how

they do this is a mystery though.

He's on to a very special track, " say Juneann an expert in

stomach

bacteria at the University of Oklahoma in Oklahoma City. " No one

else has been

able to make the connections before. "

She says the findings reinforce the message that antibiotics should

be used only

when absolutely necessary. She also suggests that patients who have

just

finished antibiotic treatment should also receive " probiotic "

tablets containing

" good " gut bacteria.

Eating foods such as raw fruit and vegetables also helps to restore

the natural

balance in our guts. " Once you are done with the antibiotics you are

not

finished, " adds Huffnagle. " You need to recover from the treatment

itself. "

NewScientist.com - May 25, 2004