Are Premature Infants Receiving Too Many Antibiotics? Study Says Yes

Antibiotics appear to be overused in many neonatal intensive care units, according to study published today in the American Academy of Pediatrics journal.

Antibiotics are used to fight bacterial infections and can vary in intensity based on type. However, antibiotics also contribute to life-threatening problems for babies born prematurely and other sick infants and to broad concerns about their overuse and the toll of drug-resistant bugs that find ways around our medical arsenal.

In the largest study of its kind, California health officials analyzed the medical care of more than 52,000 infants in 127 neonatal intensive care units across the state in 2013.  Dr. Joseph Schulman, who works for the state and led the study.

Schulman's team found no evidence that high rates of antibiotic use corresponded to higher rates of proven infections, so it wasn't as simple as the sickest babies being clustered at certain hospitals and driving up antibiotic use.

"Connections have been made between antibiotic exposure and risk of necrotizing enterocolitis, and nosocomial infection in neonates, as well as an understanding that alterations in the gut microbiome may be linked to longer term outcomes such as childhood obesity," Roger F. Soll, MD, of the University of Vermont, and William H. Edwards, MD, of Dartmouth College, wrote in an editorial in Pediatrics.

But, Soll and Edwards added, "Our ability to discern the need to initiate or terminate antibiotic use is limited."