Martin Ducret, doctor and journalist at Doctor’s Daily, gives us the results of a large Danish study, which revealed that taking antibiotics increases the risk of developing two chronic inflammatory diseases of the digestive tract, Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
franceinfo: Before telling us about this study, explain to us how these two inflammatory bowel diseases manifest themselves…
Martin Ducret : Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis are manifested by bouts of severe abdominal pain and diarrhea, and can develop into potentially serious complications. They concern less than 1% of French people, preferentially affect young adults, and their causes are of both genetic and environmental origin (pollution, diet, taking certain medications).
What does this study tell us?
This high quality study observed 6 million Danes for 19 years. Conclusion: the older a patient was, and the more antibiotics he had consumed during his life, the more his risk of developing one of these two diseases increased. A risk multiplied by 2 after 40 years.
But why are older people more exposed?
“Because that as we age, the digestive microbiota, i.e. the bacteria that populate our intestine, loses diversity and becomes more sensitive to external disturbances, explained to me Professor David Laharie, specialist in the digestive tract at the Bordeaux hospital center. Antibiotics accelerate this process of weakening the microbiota associated with aging.”
So the more antibiotics you take during your life, the more impact they will have, by cumulative effect, on the microbiota. And it can potentially lead, although quite rarely, to the onset of inflammatory bowel disease, particularly in old age.
Does that mean you have to take less antibiotics?
Yes quite. To prevent them from disturbing the microbiota, it is necessary, from an early age, to limit them to their strict indications, that is to say bacterial infections. Far too many children and adults benefit from antibiotics when they have a simple viral infection, such as the flu, a cold or bronchitis. Blame it on the unscrupulous doctors, and on the pressure of certain ill-informed patients.
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