Though antibiotics have saved millions of lives since their discovery, it may make life worse for a certain subset of children. Researchers today in Pediatrics have released a study that purports to show a connection between antibiotic use in children and the development of juvenile arthritis, a rare but debilitating condition.
Analyzing the medical records of nearly half a million children in the United Kingdom, they found that children who had been prescribed an antibiotic within a one-year time period were twice as likely to develop arthritis than those who weren’t - a risk that increased with increase in amount of antibiotics they were prescribed. What is known as juvenile arthritis is actually a dizzying array of similar conditions, each with different characteristics - the most common of which is juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, which involves persistent joint pain for more than six…
