Preventing childhood asthma and allergy: the neglected impacts of antibiotic stewardship and human milk exposure in infants

Increasing evidence suggests that antibiotic exposure in infancy increases a child’s risk of developing asthma and other allergic conditions later in childhood by altering the gut microbial environment which is important for developing healthy immunological pathways. Interestingly, exposure to human milk has been shown to largely mitigate this increased risk of asthma in infants receiving antibiotics, by restoring the diversity of the infant’s gut microbiota. These questions, however, have not yet been explored across an entire population of children. In this Grand Rounds, Dr. Lishman will discuss the growing body of evidence around this mechanistic pathway and will present the BC results from a retrospective cohort study conducted across BC and Manitoba exploring infant antibiotic use and childhood atopic disease outcomes. Dr. Lishman has spent the last eight years working in antimicrobial stewardship, completing her PhD at Imperial College London in 2019 and a UBC postdoctoral fellowship supervised by Dr. David Patrick at BCCDC in 2023. She specialises in cohort study design and the use of routinely-collected data for disease risk modelling. She will be joining the BCCDC as the Senior Scientist in Community Antimicrobial Stewardship. Learning objectives: Learn about early life risk factors related to the development of asthma and atopic disease in children Gain a basic understanding of the administrative data landscape in British Columbia and how these datasets link together Learn about disease risk modelling methodologies and how to investigate potential sources of bias using sensitivity analyses

Mediasite Presenter

10/24/2023 7:00:00 PM