Though it may seem to parents that their doctor should be prescribing antibiotics to their sick child, by not prescribing antibiotics, the doctor may actually be doing your little one a favor that could impact future health and immunity.
In recent times, much research has been done on the long term impact of giving antibiotics to babies.
It has been found that those babies, who were given antibiotics in the first 6 months of life, were 52% more likely to have asthma and allergies later in life, when compared with those who did not get any antibiotics in the first six months of life.
It is thought that this early exposure of a baby’s system to antibiotics imbalances the immune system of the baby and also causes the baby to have a poorer allergic response.
It is also to be considered that many times antibiotics are prescribed by doctors either at the parents behest or otherwise when the symptoms are actually caused by a viral infection, which antibiotics will be ineffectual against anyway.
At any age, overuse of antibiotics can contribute to the development of drug resistant bacteria, which causes pharmaceutical to become ineffectual against them.
So for these and other reasons, it is parents who ought to consider if there is really any need to give antibiotics to infants.
