Antibiotics in Pregnancy, Infancy Not Linked to Autoimmune Diseases

TUESDAY, Aug. 26, 2025 (HealthDay News) — There seems to be no association between antibiotic exposure during the prenatal period or early infancy and development of autoimmune diseases in children, according to a study published online Aug. 21 in PLOS Medicine.

Eun-Young Choi, Pharm.D., from Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea, and colleagues conducted a nationwide cohort study using a mother-child-linked claims database of Korea”s National Health Insurance Service between 2008 and 2021. Children exposed to antibiotics during pregnancy or early infancy were compared to those not exposed. The pregnancy analysis included 1,516,574 exposed and 1,186,516 unexposed before inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW), and the infancy analysis included 1,925,585 exposed and 1,421,464 unexposed.

The researchers found that infection-restricted IPTW analyses showed a null association between antibiotic exposure and autoimmune diseases in the pregnancy analysis. In the infancy analysis, there were also no significant differences seen in autoimmune disease risk between exposed and nonexposed groups. Similar associations were seen in sibling-matched analyses. Maternal use of cephalosporins or antibiotics during the first or second trimester was associated with a small increased risk for Crohn disease in a pregnancy analysis, while there was a modestly increased risk for autoimmune thyroiditis in an infancy analysis in association with antibiotic exposure in males or during the first two months of life.

“While the potential benefits of antibiotic treatment in managing infections during pregnancy or early infancy likely outweigh the minimal risk of autoimmune outcomes, our findings also highlight the need for cautious and clinically appropriate antibiotic use during these critical developmental periods, particularly in specific subgroups,” the authors write.

One author disclosed ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

Abstract/Full Text