[HN Gopher] Childhood antibiotics as a risk factor for Crohn's d... ___________________________________________________________________ Childhood antibiotics as a risk factor for Crohn's disease: Cohort study Author : Jimmc414 Score : 135 points Date : 2022-07-09 17:05 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) (TXT) w3m dump (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) | sk8terboi wrote: | w10-1 wrote: | OMG, does anyone think that with samples size this small that | this study means anything? The effect is barely significant, and | the potential confounders could fill a dictionary. | | Crohn's et al is important, but this study adds little more than | noise. | popotamonga wrote: | Happened to me. My doctor as a kid would just prescribed | antibiotic for everything thing,no matter what. How can there be | such bad doctors. | swayvil wrote: | It's screwy for sure. | | My doctor is obese and diabetic. Great doctor, wonderful | person, but dang! | | There's a disconnect there. | oneoff786 wrote: | Why do you think they are a great doctor | swayvil wrote: | Because they are nice and cure my ills... Ok good question. | lostlogin wrote: | Careful with the incantations, you might be summoning the | moderator. | dham wrote: | They still do. It's literally insane. Most will prescribe oral | for everything even if it's just a cut. Not only will they give | antibiotics they won't even tell someone to take a probiotic | during treatment. Most doctors I've met over the years just | phone it in and don't stay up to date on anything. | kube-system wrote: | It's partially doctors giving in to the demands of patients | who want a prescription for everything. I think it's a side | effect of our expensive healthcare system. People don't like | paying their copay for just a band aid. Or to be told "it's a | virus, get some sleep and drink fluids". They want to feel | like they got something for their money. | mirekrusin wrote: | That's why we now have homeopathy placebos in pharmacies. | Mildlypolite wrote: | Two words : fecal transplant. | sammyjoe72 wrote: | I had chronic tonsillitis as a kid. The doctors treated it with | antibiotics until finally after about 3 years they recommended I | just get my tonsils out. I got diagnosed with UC about 14 years | ago. Also have had psoriasis for years. | | I blame both on excessive use of antibiotics as a 5 - 8 yr old. | saiya-jin wrote: | Wife is a internal doctor (Switzerland's biggest hospital), and | we were very wary about avoiding giving any kind of antibiotics | before our kids reached age of 1. Common knowledge among peer | doctors is that even single usage before 12 months significantly | increases risk of diabetes later in life significantly (and god | knows what other nasty side effects). | | In some cases they are miracle cure, with some nasty side | effects. But general over-prescription even in relatively | developed world is ridiculous. | | From my less developed and highly corrupt home (Slovakia/Czech | republic), I often get news from friends who got prescribed full | course of antibiotics on clearly viral infections. General | doctors there are mostly on such an abysmal level that self- | treatment is sometimes better than their clueless visits. Even | for small kids. | | Another item are painkillers - I see prescriptions for literally | anything, usually heavy doses of paracetamol or ibuprofen but | I've seen worse for maladies which don't warrant it. I don't even | take those in pharmacies unless I know I have acute inflammation | to treat. | Daniel_sk wrote: | My wife is a GP in Slovakia and she has a device for a quick | test (CRP) whether you have a bacterial infection in blood or | not. So they don't prescribe antibiotics if the test is | negative. And she doesn't recommend them if not necessary - | unfortunately many patients demand them because that's what | they expect to get. But she is maybe an exemption who cares a | lot about each patient and invests into better equipment even | though you are not really incentivized by the system to do so. | refurb wrote: | Well when your kid is screaming in pain from an ear infection, | I'm not sure I'm going to decline to treat them with antibiotics | because of some small future risk of Crohn's disease. | nsgi wrote: | Does the study recommend antibiotics not be used to treat ear | infections? I would think the message is that it's even more | important not to use antibiotics when they're not needed, not | that they shouldn't be used at all | ipaddr wrote: | You are better off treating the ear pain because antibiotics | are going to take awhile if it's not viral. | robocat wrote: | Do you think you should be writing medical advice? | | Ear infections are dangerous. My nurse friend decided she | didn't need to go to a doctor for her ear pain (nurse knows | best). A few days later two burst eardrums, blood running | from ears. Fixing ear infections without losing hearing | ability is a wonder of modern science. Good parents don't | risk their children going deaf. | | The answer to bad doctors is not "don't go to the doctor". | | The answer is to go to a good doctor. | | It takes time and effort to find a good doctor. Worth the | investment since health risks are very high expected personal | costs. Or you are spending X% of your salary on health | insurance, so the implication is that you should invest | significant time and effort to get a good doctor. | | Same with house purchases: treat that like a fucking degree | you must learn, otherwise you are just gambling with quality | years of your life (the extra years you work to buy a bad | decision, the quality of life of the years you spend living | on a property). | | Either learn doctor and property knowledge (if you have the | capacity to do so), or learn how to choose the right people | to help you. Anything else is rolling the dice with your life | and the lives of those you care for. | [deleted] | DantesKite wrote: | One of the reasons why antibiotics are somewhat ineffective | against ear infections is because the bacteria develop | biofilm that makes it difficult for both the immune system | and treatments to reach that area. | | Xylitol nose spray can help along with a humidifier and | rubbing behind the ear to sort of try and disrupt the biofilm | colonies. | | Anecdotally I've also had great success with a supplement | called X-INFX (and I've tried quite a bit including various | antibiotics to no avail). | | As far as preventative measures, keeping the inner ear dry | with a quick dab of toilet paper or a little ear dryer pump | goes a long ways. | | It also helps if you get an ear cleaner, just in case you | have hardened wax. For whatever reason, an ear infection | sometimes causes wax to build up inside (which is a like a | sticky conveyor belt your body uses to "churn" out debris and | pathogens). | | I make no judgement about whether or not to use antibiotics | since that's not my expertise and I'm not a doctor. I'm just | simply offering adjunct treatments that have historically | worked for me and others. | | Best of luck everyone. | weberer wrote: | Maybe just give them topical antibiotics? | rossdavidh wrote: | On the one hand, it makes total sense to me that childhood | antibiotics could mess up your digestive tract immune system. On | the other hand: | | "Subgroup analysis showed that antibiotic use <18 years old was a | risk factor for CD development in the Chinese (adjusted OR 4.80, | 95% CI 1.62-12.24; P = 0.005) but not in Australian populations | (OR 1.80, 95% CI 0.33-9.95; P = 0.498)." | | If it were a robust finding, it would not fall apart on subgroup | analysis. | xxpor wrote: | Different antibiotics/doses/frequency of prescription in | different countries? Haven't read the whole thing yet though. | cpncrunch wrote: | Just look at the results table. Even for china it looks like | only certain age ranges show the effect. Most likely just | random. | [deleted] | Saint_Genet wrote: | I suspect (but have no science to back it up) that it's a risk | factor for many things. I had ear infections more or less | constantly in my childhood and were on antibiotics the whole time | until they finally stooped working. The end result is that I'm | now deaf on one ear. I get why they were prescribed, it stopped | the acute pain but no one thought about the long term | PaulKeeble wrote: | Antibiotics are actually really more damaging than we realise. | Western digestive tracts show significant differences in | microbiome that those of people who do not use antibiotics as | treatment and some of the lost species are really important. We | also have no way to fix it currently, some of the species like | Faecalibacterium Prausnitzii are critical to our bodies energy | system but can't survive in oxygen, so we have no way to eat it | at all, you kill it then its gone likely for good. Others like | Limosilactobacillus reuteri stop fungus from inhabiting our small | intestine as well as other bacteria but just 5% of us still have | some of it as its very susceptible to antibiotics. | | We don't know what ideal microbiomes look like, we just know the | bulk of people living in the western world have unhealthy ones | that are missing key species and we have only scratched the | surface of understanding. | [deleted] | bobbylarrybobby wrote: | How are bacteria that can't be eaten first acquired by infants? | PaulKeeble wrote: | Passed to them from their mother while in the womb. Seems to | be transferred at birth but there is some evidence it happens | earlier too. | refurb wrote: | Source? | | Amniotic fluid and blood is sterile. | | Newborns acquire their biome once born by ingesting various | food and contact from family members. | jamal-kumar wrote: | I had really bad IBS from consuming water on a tropical island in | Panama one time and suffered for a few years with even my doctor | friend telling me "Damn that sucks, not much you can do except | manage". Pretty horrible symptoms until I discovered L. Reuteri. | [1] I read that it's been a bacteria that was more commonly found | in samples until around the 1950s when people started consuming | more garbage processed food and was sold. Simply stated, it | changed my life. It emits a substance called Reuterin which | inhibits the growth of other more harmful bacterial species. [2] | I can't speak personally for suffering on the level of Crohn's | disease, but there's positive research out there regarding it. | [3] [4] | | [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5917019/ | | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuterin | | [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7270012/ | | [4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7468961/ | AdmiralAsshat wrote: | Fellow IBS-sufferer here. Runs in my family. | | So doing a search for "Reuteri" on Amazon, I immediately see | several pages worth of supplements, with such helpful reviews | as "HELPS DIGESTION. ENLARGES TESTICLES."[0] | | How do you separate the trustworthy supplements from the snake | oil? | | [0] https://a.co/d/4Qa1iy1 | vimy wrote: | If reddit anecdotes are to be believed the enlarged testicles | are true. | | https://www.reddit.com/r/Supplements/comments/9pdrg1/my_expe. | .. | | https://www.reddit.com/r/Supplements/comments/m3ywju/questio. | .. | | There are more but just linking these two. | bbarnett wrote: | In places like this on reddit, so many posts are just | influencer accounts. | | You'd probably be better off reading such reddit forums, | and presuming the exact opposite happens. | | This is another area to clean up, in the digital age. | heavyset_go wrote: | Just echoing this. I've worked with marketing agencies | who use Reddit to post things like this for their | clients. | | Both of those posts have the OP linking to specific | products, with one of the OPs blatantly posting a | referral link to a specific product. | | Even without the links or mentioning specific products or | brands, marketers will post things like this to build up | markets, audiences and anticipation for new products, in | this case it is a specific species and variant of | bacteria. | jamal-kumar wrote: | There's one supplier I trust out of Sweden called Biogaia. | [1] Look for the keith haring lookalike box art. I don't buy | anything off of that website but it's something you can get a | couple of weeks supply of from the pharmacy for under 100$. | | Amazon is so full of scams, Jeff Bezos really needs to be | held to account for that. | | [1] https://www.biogaia.com/ | unicornporn wrote: | > There's one supplier I trust out of Sweden called Biogaia | | Which supplement from them are you referring to? | lstamour wrote: | Probably https://www.biogaia.com/product/biogaia-gastrus/ | ? | oneoff786 wrote: | Having any sort of active microbiome is probably a good idea | and an intended aspect of the human digestive system. I don't | know that this one specifically is better or worse but I | would probably consider probiotics a decent idea to try. | | The testes thing is... I guess vaguely plausible. I'm bemused | everyone in the reviews seems to be confident that this is | desirable. It seems like desperate people are just flocking | to some study on rats. | AdmiralAsshat wrote: | Sure, but the parent comment was suggesting a specific | bacterium, so I would want to make sure whatever probiotics | I'm buying contain it. And normally I would probably just | rely on getting them through a trusted vendor (e.g. my | neighborhood grocer/pharamcy/health food store), but if I'm | forced to shop online to make sure it has this specific | thing in it...I want something I can check to vouch for its | quality, yeah? | | For example, pretty much every bottle of probiotics you buy | will claim it contains "Over XX billion CFUs (colony- | forming units?) in every pill!" But, are more better? Are | they the right kind? Will I get 60 billion CFUs in a pill | if I just dehydrate some pond water? | markdown wrote: | > And normally I would probably just rely on getting them | through a trusted vendor (e.g. my neighborhood | grocer/pharamcy/health food store), but if I'm forced to | shop online to make sure it has this specific thing in | it...I want something I can check to vouch for its | quality, yeah? | | Oddly enough, with the food/supplement I'm most familiar | with, kava, the worst quality you can find is in brick | and mortar establishments. The trusted vendors are all | online-only and dedicated entirely to the one product | instead of just trying to stock their shelves with every | supplement on the planet. | AdmiralAsshat wrote: | Well I guess my thought process (however incorrect it | might be) is that from a _food safety_ perspective--not | necessarily a supplement efficacy perspective--there 's a | greater bar to pass for the FDA to allow something to sit | on the shelf at CVS than to get it from some random | vendor on Amazon that might not even reside in the US. | emmelaich wrote: | https://iherb.com/search?kw=Reuterin | ARandomerDude wrote: | > Fellow IBS-sufferer here. Runs in my family. | | I see what you did there. | collegeburner wrote: | Interestingly, may not be all wrong: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3879365/ | | Yes its shitty chumbucket type marketing but there's still | some potential. | folli wrote: | Reuterin which is a broad spectrum antibiotic... Ironic. | webstrand wrote: | How did it change your life? Did you take a supplement | containing it, or was it some experimental treatment? | jamal-kumar wrote: | I don't have the shits every day anymore. Got it at a | pharmacy. | DantesKite wrote: | Along those same lines, Visbiome and homemade kefir (the kind | at the store isn't technically kefir) helped me out immensely. | ThrowawayTestr wrote: | Where do you get it? | jamal-kumar wrote: | Pharmacy | rhexs wrote: | Go to any health food store and they'll have a refrigerated | section of all the placebo bacteria supplements you could | ever want. | jamal-kumar wrote: | You speak from a position of disparagement but I'm living | proof -\\_(tsu)_/- | danielheath wrote: | The world has no shortage of "I don't understand this so | it couldn't be important" in daily life, let alone | online. | oneoff786 wrote: | You can test if a probiotic is actually alive. They may not | provide the effect you want but they're probably not | placebos. The good ones at least. | anonporridge wrote: | Test I found if anyone else is wondering. | | https://drformulas.com/blogs/news/probiotic-milk-test- | how-do... | yumraj wrote: | Since it's a Lactobacillus, I wonder if you can take the | supplements and introduce it in home made yogurt? | | Then just consume the yogurt regularly. | | Not sure if anyone has ever tried anything like that.. | bsilvereagle wrote: | It looks like this strain will indeed culture a yogurt - | https://www.luvele.com/blogs/recipe-blog/how-to-make-l- | reute... | yumraj wrote: | This is seriously awesome. We make yogurt at home anyway, | so it is very easy to introduce this. | | I'm assuming we can just add this to our culture and not | make yogurt using just this, but I guess that will require | some experimentation. | bluechair wrote: | Yes you can make yogurt out of it. Technically speaking, | lactobacillus refers to the fact that this bacterium produces | lactic acid not that it consumes lactose. | | It's easy to confuse. | | I just finished making 2 liters of yogurt with this bacterium | this morning. | yumraj wrote: | Is your yogurt culture just this bacteria or did you start | with regular yogurt culture and added this? | metadat wrote: | Which tropical island, specifically? | | It sounds horrible, I'm sorry that happened to you. | ng12 wrote: | > Damn that sucks, not much you can do except manage | | This has been my entire experience with gastroenterology as a | field. Once they rule out cancer there's really not much they | can do for you. Meanwhile, I'm waiting for the revolution in | our understanding of the microbiome. | Mildlypolite wrote: | My advice is to go to microbiome experts like Dr Borody, he | has a lot more tools to help like fecal transplants and | antibiotica for Crohn (long story, look at his videos). | Borody is the one who invented the triple antibiotics therapy | for the helicobacter pylori. | wincy wrote: | I've been throwing up for a year straight. Recently it has | gotten worse. The only thing that seems to help is weight | loss. I just feel like there's shit in the back of my throat | multiple times a day (which I mean, there is) but the only | way to clear it to my body's satisfaction is throwing up. | Gastroenterologist took a look and said everything looked | fine. Thanks, doc, very helpful. | kevinmchugh wrote: | I couldn't swallow pills before, my gastroenterologist | performed surgery which corrected that. She also proscribed | pills which address my GERD | ng12 wrote: | That's fair. Guess I'm mostly talking about the other end | of the system :) | Aaargh20318 wrote: | Do you need to keep taking this or is it enough to take it a | while and repopulate your guts ? | | How long until you saw results ? | jamal-kumar wrote: | I took a couple of 40$ boxes of it for a few weeks and ever | since, I've had no problems. Pretty great! | | I buy a box every now and then since then just to keep it up. | It's like the most expensive probiotic on the shelf, but it | works. | | Oh yeah, and I also stopped consuming crap that goes in the | fridge or freezer ready to eat a long long time ago. I think | that might have something to do with it. They found that | there's certain harmful bacterial species which proliferate | in such environments [1] | | [1] https://ask.usda.gov/s/article/Can-bacteria-grow-in-the- | refr... | sprokolopolis wrote: | Also, people who are eating too many pre- | made/processed/frozen foods might not be eating enough | fresh, organic fruits and vegetables, which are a great | source of helpful bacteria and the prebiotic fibers that | keep them alive. | sgammon wrote: | this is fascinating, thank you for sharing | codeTired wrote: | The healthcare needs to be completely overhauled. So many doctors | are completely ignorant of risks of antibiotics and other meds. | | There was a study that found 7% of doctors reported adverse | reactions. Some were scared, some didn't know how, some didn't | have time. Some doctors made no reports in nearly lifetime of | practice. | | When I was 16-22 I had multiple 6+ months courses of doxycycline | for acne. I have seen multiple dermatologist who said nothing can | be done about my cystic acne. At some point I was tired of doxy | making me feel awful so I researched different skin types and | skin care routines. As long as I use a mild soap twice a day, use | a moisturizer and don't touch my skin I get 0 cystic acne but it | took weeks to see the results. No doctor ever told me about | different types of skin and I was young and dumb. My parents | didn't know any better. And internet wasn't as popular back then. | | Then, I got an adverse reaction to cipro. And 40+ doctors ignored | it. Told me it's all in my head. Told me to seek help for my | mental health and depression. Later FDA added warning about | permanent nerve damage. I still have to send studies to doctors | because they try to tell me I'm wrong, after I had every test | under the sun to rule out other causes. | | I help admin flouroquinolone toxicity group and every day we get | individuals who were given these last resort meds for suspected | infection. It is border line medical malpractice. However, I have | seen that it is impossible to find a lawyer to take the case and | find a physician willing to testify. | | There needs to be a better system for tracking allergic reactions | and trends. For example, cipro might show no reaction up to 6 | months. Then, you snap your Achilles. The doctor won't tell you | it was cipro unless you tell him. It's fucked and extremely | underreported. | bejelentkezni wrote: | >So many doctors are completely ignorant of risks of | antibiotics and other meds. | | Not ignorant, complicit. | ReptileMan wrote: | >The healthcare needs to be completely overhauled. So many | doctors are completely ignorant of risks of antibiotics and | other meds. | | Doctors are well aware by my talks with them. There is | unfortunately a large subset of the population that unless | prescribed antibiotics feel that they have not been taken care | by the doctor. So there is quite a demand. | ipaddr wrote: | Are there any techniques for recovery you discovered? | Madmallard wrote: | If you were damaged enough for long term side-effects it is | likely to an extent an irreversible process, as it trends to | be for many diseases. | | That's not to say you can't have some recovery and adapt, | just that what you were before is never coming back. | | I developed diastolic dysfunction and severe sensitivities | and food intolerances after Cipro and other antibiotics in | 2014. The only way there could be a persistent diastolic | dysfunction is if there has been permanent damage to the | cells of the heart. | | If he has input as to things which helped him I'd love to | see, but as far as I understand, if the mechanism is indeed | mtdna depletion and mutagenesis from excessive ROS then I | don't really see how you actually cure that. | swayvil wrote: | The problem is how knowledge in managed in our society. | | A central authority administering truth to the greater unwashed | mass is the popular method. | | And it seems to be built into us, to get our truth that way. | Truth is what the authority tells us. Contriving truth yourself | is generally considered a perversion. | | So there's that inertia, keeping the knowledge management | system stuck this way. | | Maybe high-quality society-wide pervasive knowledge is | impossible. | victorclf wrote: | I research every prescribed treatment side effects after | levofloxacin gave me bilateral achilles tendinitis. In my | experience, potential side effects and complications from | treatments are never discussed with patients. | | I also had the displeasure of suffering from the mental side | effects of the antiallergic montelukast, which again were not | even mentioned by the doctor despite the serious FDA warning. | tcbawo wrote: | Doctors in the USA have no feedback mechanisms to know whether | treatments work or not. They're probably falling back to | hunches in marginal cases. Also, if you are discussing | treatment options with parents or patients, advising against | antibiotics is a losing battle: the parent/patient gets angry | whether you are right or wrong. The question of whether | antibiotics would be helpful or ineffective means there is | asymmetric risk. Even long term risks are unknown on an | individual case by case basis. | codeTired wrote: | There is definitely a mix of issues. Some patients expect | antibiotics because they paid for the visit. | | However, every physician should be able to present patient | with different options and risks. It simply is not happening. | Some antibiotics carry smaller risks than flouroquinolones as | this drug belongs to topoisomare II inhibitors along with | chemo drugs. Some reactions we are seeing are much like | damage from chemo. However, the action of damage is still | very poorly understood. There is some research on | mitochondrial dna damage and adducts. | | There recently has been talk if flouroquinolone antibiotics | could be a potential cancer treatment even. | | If I knew I would never touch this antibiotic unless on my | death bed. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-07-09 23:00 UTC)