A large new study appears to confirm that there is no link between the early use of antibiotics and a rise in childhood asthma.

Previous studies have suggested that if a mother take antibiotics while pregnant, or her child is given antibiotics in early life, that child has an increased risk of going on to develop asthma.

Swedish researchers decided to investigate this further. They looked at almost a half a million children who had been born between January 2006 and December 2010.

For the first part of their study, they looked at those who had been exposed to antibiotics while still in the womb. Among these children, the risk of asthma was 28% higher. However, when the researchers included other risk factors, such as lifestyle, home environment and genetics, this increased risk of asthma disappeared.

For the second part of the study, they looked at children who had been given antibiotics in early life. They assessed whether the risk of developing asthma was as high if the child had been treated with antibiotics for a skin, urinary tract or respiratory infection.

They found that this was not so. Instead, the risk of developing asthma was much higher if the child had been treated for a respiratory infection.

This, the researchers said, indicated that the link was actually due to newly presented asthma being mistaken for a respiratory infection and treated with antibiotics, or that the respiratory infection increased the risk of asthma, irrespective of whether it was treated with antibiotics or not.

When the researchers compared siblings who had taken antibiotics for skin, urinary tract and respiratory infections, they again found that the link between antibiotics and asthma disappeared.

"Our results indicate that there is no causal link between antibiotics treatment and childhood asthma. But it is still important to use antibiotics very carefully, considering the threat of antibiotic resistance. We also want to emphasise the importance of correctly diagnosing children with airway symptoms, where suspected symptoms of asthma should be separated from respiratory infection," commented lead researcher, Prof Catarina Almqvist Malmrosof, of the Karolinska Institutet.

Details of these findings are published in the British Medical Journal.

A recent study also found that the suggested link between early exposure to paracetamol and an increased risk of developing asthma in childhood may be ‘overstated'. For more, see here

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