ArticleBMJ (Clinical research ed.)2014
Antibiotics in fetal and early life and subsequent childhood asthma: nationwide population based study with sibling analysis.
Article in BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 64 papers, 6 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
64 citing papers in PubMed, 6 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 147 citations in OpenAlex.
- The association between early-life respiratory infections and childhood asthma: a meta-analytic perspective.Frontiers in medicine · 2026Pooled it
- Prevalence of systemic antibacterial use during pregnancy worldwide: A systematic review.PloS one · 2024Pooled it
- Environmental Risk Factors, Protective Factors, and Biomarkers for Allergic Rhinitis: A Systematic Umbrella Review of the Evidence.Clinical reviews in allergy & immunology · 2023Pooled it
- The relationship of prenatal antibiotic exposure and infant antibiotic administration with childhood allergies: a systematic review.BMC pediatrics · 2020Pooled it
- Maternal exposure to antibiotics increases the risk of infant eczema before one year of life: a meta-analysis of observational studies.World journal of pediatrics : WJP · 2020Pooled it
- [Association between use of antibacterial agents in the first year of life and childhood asthma: a Meta analysis].Zhongguo dang dai er ke za zhi = Chinese journal of contemporary pediatrics · 2016Pooled it
- Identification of Risk-Related Prenatal Medication Exposure Profiles for Childhood Asthma Using the Bayesian Profile Regression: A Cohort Study Using the POMME Cohort.Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety · 2026Article
- Distinct early gut microbiota patterns by delivery mode within 100 hours of birth.World journal of clinical pediatrics · 2026Article
- Early Childhood Antibiotics and Chronic Pediatric Conditions: A Retrospective Cohort Study.The Journal of infectious diseases · 2025Article
- The impact of neonatal antibiotic exposure on the development of childhood food allergies.European journal of pediatrics · 2025Article
- Intestinal dysbiosis during pregnancy and microbiota-associated impairments in offspring.Frontiers in microbiomes · 2025Review
- Use of antibiotics in early life and development of diseases in childhood: nationwide registry study.BMJ medicine · 2025Article
- Assessing Diagnostic Performance of Molecular Culture for Neonatal Sepsis: Protocol of the CHAMPIONS Study.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Antibiotics, Analgesic Sedatives, and Antiseizure Medications Frequently Used in Critically Ill Neonates: A Narrative Review.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Association Between Early-Life Exposure to Antibiotics and Development of Child Obesity: Population-Based Study in Italy.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2024Article
- LSD1 drives intestinal epithelial maturation and controls small intestinal immune cell composition independent of microbiota in a murine model.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Exploring the potential mediating role of systemic antibiotics in the association between early-life lower respiratory tract infections and asthma at age 5 in the CHILD study.Frontiers in allergy · 2024Article
- Antimicrobials use and infection hospital contacts as proxies of infection exposure at ages 0-2 years and risk of infectious mononucleosis.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Association between antibiotics and asthma risk among adults aged over 40 years: a nationally representative retrospective cohort study.BMJ open respiratory research · 2023Article
- Inflammation during Pregnancy Predisposes to Childhood Asthma by Altering Long Noncoding RNA Expression.American journal of respiratory cell and molecular biology · 2023Article
4 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo investigate the association between exposure to antibiotics in fetal and early life and asthma in childhood, with adjustment for confounding factors.
designNationwide prospective population based cohort study, including sibling control design.
settingSwedish population identified from national demographic and health registers.
participants493,785 children born 2006-10; 180,894 of these were eligible for sibling analyses.
main outcome measureAsthma defined as having both an asthma diagnosis and dispensed asthma drugs. The association between antibiotic exposure and asthma was investigated in the whole cohort with Cox proportional hazard regression. A stratified proportional hazards model conditional on sibling group was used to adjust for shared factors within families. Confounding by respiratory infections was assessed by investigating whether specific groups of antibiotics were associated with asthma.
resultsAntibiotic exposure in fetal life was associated with an increased risk of asthma in cohort analyses (hazard ratio 1.28, 95% confidence interval 1.25 to 1.32), but not in sibling analyses (0.99, 0.92 to 1.07). In cohort analyses, antibiotics used to treat respiratory infections in childhood were associated with a more pronounced increased risk of asthma (4.12, 3.78 to 4.50) than antibiotics used for urinary tract and skin infections (1.54, 1.24 to 1.92). In sibling analyses, the excess risks after exposure to antibiotics for respiratory infections decreased (2.36, 1.78 to 3.13) and disappeared for antibiotics for urinary tract and skin (0.85, 0.47 to 1.55).
conclusionsPrevious positive associations between exposure to antibiotics in fetal and early life and subsequent childhood asthma could have been caused by confounding by shared familial factors, in addition to confounding by respiratory infections.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.