ArticleNature communications2021
Neonatal antibiotic exposure impairs child growth during the first six years of life by perturbing intestinal microbial colonization.
Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 124 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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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.
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Who cites it
124 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 214 citations in OpenAlex.
- Management of neonates at risk of early onset sepsis: a probability-based approach and recent literature appraisal : Update of the Swiss national guideline of the Swiss Society of Neonatology and the Pediatric Infectious Disease Group Switzerland.European journal of pediatrics · 2024Guideline
- MetaPhlAn 4 profiling of unknown species-level genome bins improves the characterization of diet-associated microbiome changes in mice.Cell reports · 2023Pooled it
- Umbilical cord blood culture in neonatal early-onset sepsis: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Pediatric research · 2022Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Mass azithromycin distribution and antibiotic resistance in the gut and nasopharynx: a cluster-randomized trial.Nature medicine · 2026Trial
- Aberrant Growth in 5-Year-Old Children After Antibiotics in the First Week of Life.Acta paediatrica (Oslo, Norway : 1992) · 2026Trial
- Reversible aberrancies in gut microbiome of moderate and late preterm infants: results from a randomized, controlled trial.Gut microbes · 2023Trial
- Trial
- Impact of probiotics supplement on the gut microbiota in neonates with antibiotic exposure: an open-label single-center randomized parallel controlled study.World journal of pediatrics : WJP · 2021Trial
- Perinatal ampicillin exposure alters murine maternal fecal bile acid and acylcarnitine profiles.Gut microbes · 2026Article
- High early-life gut Bacteroides links to microbiome stability, resilience, and risk for childhood infections.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2026Article
- Impact of Early-Life Antibiotic Exposure on Gut Microbiome and Vaccine Immunogenicity in Infants: A Narrative Review.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Review
- Impact of targeted infection prevention and control interventions on bloodstream infections and colonization with carbapenem-resistant organisms among hospitalized neonates, Bangladesh, 2023-2024.Antimicrobial resistance and infection control · 2026Article
- Article
- Integrated assessment of developmental toxicity of antibiotic pollutants: Machine learning prediction, zebrafish validation, and network toxicology.Molecular diversity · 2026Article
- Antibiotic Exposure Through Human Milk Influences the Infant Gut Microbiome.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Article
- Associations between early life exposure to parvovirus and antibiotic treatment and the occurrence and severity of later chronic enteropathy in dogs.The Veterinary record · 2026Article
- A Functional Metabolomics Framework to Track Microbiome Drug Metabolism.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Receptor identification and in vivo efficacy of a lytic phage vB_EcoStr-FJ63A against colistin-resistant Escherichia coli.Veterinary research · 2026Article
64 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
22 authors at 8 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Exposure to antibiotics in the first days of life is thought to affect various physiological aspects of neonatal development. Here, we investigate the long-term impact of antibiotic treatment in the neonatal period and early childhood on child growth in an unselected birth cohort of 12,422 children born at full term. We find significant attenuation of weight and height gain during the first 6 years of life after neonatal antibiotic exposure in boys, but not in girls, after adjusting for potential confounders. In contrast, antibiotic use after the neonatal period but during the first 6 years of life is associated with significantly higher body mass index throughout the study period in both boys and girls. Neonatal antibiotic exposure is associated with significant differences in the gut microbiome, particularly in decreased abundance and diversity of fecal Bifidobacteria until 2 years of age. Finally, we demonstrate that fecal microbiota transplant from antibiotic-exposed children to germ-free male, but not female, mice results in significant growth impairment. Thus, we conclude that neonatal antibiotic exposure is associated with a long-term gut microbiome perturbation and may result in reduced growth in boys during the first six years of life while antibiotic use later in childhood is associated with increased body mass index.
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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.