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According to a Danish study, taking antibiotics would be associated with a greater risk of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), especially in subjects over 40 years old.
If you have chronic inflammatory bowel disease, it could be due to taking antibiotics. A new Danish study published in the journal Gut and conducted on the health data of more than 6 million individuals, has indeed studied the incidence rate for IBD following exposure to antibiotics.
A more pronounced risk after age 40 and repeated use of antibiotics
The team of scientists compared in a large cohort study the medical data of more than 6 million Danes, between 2000 and 2018, the taking of antibiotics and the incidence of nearly 53,000 new cases of IBD over the period. concerned. Their calculations show that exposure to antibiotics increases the risk of IBD, both Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, in all individuals aged 10 years or older. But several new facts support this new analysis:
- It shows that this risk is also higher in people aged 40 or over;
- According to their analysis, the risk of developing IBD is also higher with repeated use of antibiotics, within one to two years of treatment;
- Finally, if all the classes of antibiotics evaluated are concerned, the risk is higher with those targeting gastrointestinal pathogens, such as nitroimidazoles and fluoroquinolones.
A microbiome that changes with age
The age parameter is the most significant point of this new study. Other studies had already shown that taking antibiotics was involved in the development of IBD in children, but until then it was unknown what happened in adults.
On this news, the researchers, who are only analyzing the figures here, nevertheless put forward a hypothesis that explains this phenomenon: “As individuals age, the gut microbiome changes, becoming less diverse and more susceptible to alterations. These age-related changes can be aggravated by taking antibiotics, which further robs the gut microbiome of its diversity.”