Posted on 03/24/2022 3:19:24 PM PDT by ConservativeMind
A team of researchers has found a link between the use of antibiotics by middle-aged women and cognitive decline later in life.
Prior research has suggested that there is a connection between gut microbiome health and mental health—communication between the gut and the central nervous system has been labeled the gut-brain axis. And some studies have shown an apparent link between problems in the gut and mental diseases, such as depression and schizophrenia. Prior research has also shown that antibiotics use can lead to serious disruptions in the microbiome. This is not surprising, since the microbiome is made up partly of bacteria. In this new effort, the researchers found a link between antibiotics use by women during middle age and a larger than normal degree of cognitive decline.
To learn more about possible impacts of antibiotics use by middle-aged women, the researchers pulled data from the Nurses' Health Study II, an ongoing project that involves collecting health data from female nurses over multiple years. They analyzed data from 15,129 female nurses describing antibiotics use and the results of cognitive scores collected several years later, comparing those who took antibiotics over different duration periods with those who did not. The cognitive tests consisted of computerized playing card tasks to measure thinking speed, attention, learning and memory. Each of the nurses was classified into one of four categories depending on their use of antibiotics, from no use to over two months of use.
The researchers found that the nurses who had taken antibiotics for at least two months scored lower on the cognitive tests (taken seven years later) than the nurses who had taken antibiotics for a shorter period of time, or not at all. The researchers suggest the decline was approximately equivalent to three to four years of aging.
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
Two months is a long time. Usually they are given for ten days. I wonder why women were taking them for that long?
UTI problems?
I have never been on 2 months of antibiotics
It was a cumulative exposure from multiple occasions over many years.
I would have died in 1977, 1987, 1994, and 2008, if it wasn’t for serious antibiotics intravenously and with post discharge oral pills. I think the few months I may lose are just fine by me.
I was on antibiotics for recurrent sinus infections
Going through this with my elderly mom AGAIN. Very common and makes them appear as tho they are “slipping”.
Antibiotics are over-prescribed. Most diseases have developed a degree of immunity to them and are becoming increasingly useless in treating people with life threatening diseases. The only way to stop this is to get doctors to stop prescribing them for non life treating situations.
Probiotics are good. Nancy’s Probiotic Yogurt has more than regular yogurt, which has probiotics too. You can buy capsules as well.
UTI, sinus infection chronic, rosacea.
I see a big collinearity problem here. Wreaks havoc on regression analyses. Presumably people with health problems are more likely to take antibiotics. This makes it hard to extract the cause of differences in old age health. Was it antibiotics or the underlying health problems that required antibiotics?
Read later.
We occasionally get that one, at Sprouts.
If it was cumulative over a lifetime, 2 months isn’t that much. Yikes.
If it’s about common issues, why would only 1% be interested? I’m trying to decide which category to go for. Can you list a couple of examples?
Perhaps if antibiotics are a problem you should take an anti-antibiotic.
There's always more than one way. Natural selection never ends. As long as the free market can operate freely, there will always be effective antibiotics.
There are studies that address health issues that impact less than 1% of the population.
The “Everything” list sends a ping for every study posted. The “Common Issues” list only pings skips sending a ping for studies that likely affect less than 1% of the population, but these people will still get pings for all issues that affect more than 1% of the population.
A recent example would be melanoma. Far less than 1% of people get melanoma, but more than 1% of the population gets tested for it (lots of dermatologists can’t visually determine it from another form). The “Everything” list subscribers would get the melanoma study, while the “Common Issues” list won’t. They will still, obviously, see the thread on Free Republic’s main page and in the “General/Chat” forum, though.
According to the study, the myriad conditions the prescriptions were written for the nurses were given:
“Participants were asked to report the most common reason that an antibiotic was used with the following response categories: respiratory infection, urinary tract infection (UTI), acne/rosacea, chronic bronchitis, dental, and other reason.”
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0264649
It's remotely possible that a few years of acne causes four years of brain decline, but for those who had acne and took a prescription drug for it somehow were the only ones affected. Those who left their acne alone didn't brain age.
I hope this helps.
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