from Digestive Disease Week 2022
Antibiotic prescriptions may be questioned because of the growing resistance of bacterial infections to existing antibiotics. There’s yet another very specific reason to be cautious about use of antibiotics. Doctors at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine report antibiotic use by people sixty and older increases the risk of inflammatory bowel disease. Their data came from more than two million medical records in Denmark and featured in Digestive Disease Week 2022. The statistics suggest any antibiotic use was associated with higher rates of inflammatory bowel disease in people over sixty. However, lead researcher Dr. Adam Faye cautions that antibiotics should not be withheld for people needing them just because of this study.