Study: Antibiotics affect babies’ long-term health

Giving infants antibiotics that also kill many evolving healthy gut bacteria could be putting them at risk of developing asthma, obesity and allergies later on, a groundbreaking Irish study suggests.

Cork-based researchers used advanced DNA sequencing for the first time to identify and count gut flora in newborns.

The composition in the gut of infants treated with broad-spectrum antibiotics was found to be still altered eight weeks after treatment.