Antibiotic use in infancy and neurocognitive outcomes in children: the role of bacterial denitrification.

Abstract

Slykerman et al. (1) recently investigated the role of antibiotic use in early life and later adverse neurocognitive outcomes in children. The authors utilized as their cohort 871 mothers and their children at birth from the Auckland Birthweight Collaborative Study. Data on antibiotic use during early life were collected from maternal interview, and behavioral assessments and intelligence test scores were obtained at the ages of 3.5, 7, and 11. The authors reported that those individuals treated with antibiotics experienced more behavioral difficulties and depressive symptomatology during the follow-up periods. This finding led the authors to conclude that there was an association between early antibiotic use and adverse neurocognitive outcomes in children, highlighting the potential need for a reevaluation of antibiotic overuse during infancy, especially if future studies are able to confirm these findings. This is a polarizing conclusion made by the authors and warrants a closer inspection of potential confounders to this discovered association. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.