Antibiotics in Children Increase Risk for Juvenile Arthritis

Exposure to antibiotics during childhood significantly increases the risk for juvenile idiopathic arthritis in a dose-dependent manner, say investigators reporting at the American College of Rheumatology 2014 Annual Meeting in Boston.

They suggest that alterations in the human microbiome might be implicated in the development of the disease.

“The more we learn about the microfilm, the more it appears that it plays an important role in a variety of different diseases, such as autoimmune diseases — and that includes inflammatory bowel disease and rheumatoid arthritis and perhaps psoriatic arthritis — all of which have some common features with juvenile arthritis,” said Daniel Horton, MD, from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

“We found that antibiotic exposure was associated with an increased risk of developing juvenile arthritis, at an adjusted odds ratio of 2.6, and that the risk increased with each additional prescription,” he told Medscape Medical News.