Getting in touch with antibiotics in the uterus or in the first weeks of life would not facilitate the onset of autoimmune conditions, as it was thought.
Resorting to the use of antibiotics in pregnancy, or having to take them in bands, exposes to a higher risk of autoimmune diseases? It has been discussed for decades, and a series of previous studies, conducted above all on animals, seemed to think it was like this. Now, however, a research on over 6 million children exhibited early to antibiotics exonerates the drugs used against infections from the accusation of sending the immune system of the little ones still in uterus or recently born. The study was published on Plos Medicine.
Antibiotics and autoimmune diseases: the hypothesis of hygiene
According to the hypothesis of hygiene, formulated in the late 1980s and later very reduced, at the base of allergies and autoimmune diseases in children there could be the lack of or poor exposure of the children to certain microorganisms present in the environment (at home, in nature, in the maternal body) that accustom the immune system still immature not to react excessively to little or at all dangerous substances.
The theory starts from the correct intake that the immune system of fetuses and infants is also built thanks to the microorganisms with which they come into contact, especially those that populate the intestine.
In fact, scientific studies show that some intestinal microorganisms produce essential substances for the development of regulatory T cells, immune cells capable of mitigating or off an excessive or too lasting immune response. Therefore, essential to prevent autoimmune diseases such as celiac disease, type 1 diabetes, lupus, crohn disease and ulcerative rectocolitis, which occur when the immune system inadvertently attacks organism and tissues.
Antibiotics and autoimmune diseases: uncertain evidence
Some studies conducted on animals have supported the hypothesis that antibiotics taken in the early stages of life may encourage autoimmune conditions: for example, an analysis conducted in 2016 on mice suggested that exposure to antibiotics in the first weeks after birth raised the risk to animals to incur type 1 diabetes within 30 weeks of life.
A possible link between antibiotics and chronic inflammatory disease of the intestine, and between antibiotics and rheumatoid arthritis (an autoimmune disease that affects the joints) has also emerged in some studies on man. Other works on different autoimmune conditions, however, found the opposite: a 2017 research has not for example found connections between type 1 diabetes and celiac disease in 15,000 children and exposure to antibiotics before the 4 years of life.
Antibiotics in uterus and bands: the new analysis
A group of scientists from Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea measured the incidence of six autoimmune diseases (type 1 diabetes, youth idiopathic arthritis, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, lupus and hashimoto’s disease (a thyroid disease) in over 2.6 million children whose mothers had had an infection in pregnancy and in about 1.5 Millions of cases had had to take antibiotics.
The same type of analysis was then conducted on 3.4 million children who had had an infection in the first six months of life: 1.9 million of them had taken antibiotics.
After taking into account factors as a type of infection, socio-economic status and children’s sex, scientists have not found ties between early exposure to antibiotics and onset of autoimmune diseases in adolescence. So how to explain the (weak) previous evidences then?
The intestinal bacterial flora is complex
The populations of bacteria that colonize the intestine are many, varied and still little known, just as their role for our health is. In addition to antibiotics, intestinal bacteria are susceptible to other factors left out in many studies, such as the role of nutrition. In addition, several antibiotics have different effects, and also the age to which the exposure takes place. For example, the South Korean team found an association between the use of broad -spectrum antibiotics in pregnancy and the onset of Crohn’s disease during childhood.
Not to mention that some antibiotics can prevent infections that degenerate into autoimmune diseases. And that, when antibiotics are prescribed in pregnancy, it means that their use is necessary to protect the health of mother and child, to prevent early birth, a low birth weight and other health problems of infants.
