Pregnant women should avoid antibiotics, researchers say

The overuse and misuse of antibiotics has been blamed for contributing to many worldwide epidemics as well as the appearance of new antibiotic resistance "super bacteria."

Now, researchers are urging women not to take antibiotics during pregnancy since the newborns may carry the resistent bacteria.

Reporting in the Oct. 1999 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, researchers from the University of Tennessee in Memphis said that, if these infants develop sepsis (a potentially life-threatening bacterial infection) a high proportion of the disease-causing bacteria were resistant to antibiotic therapy. Normally, sepsis is treated with more antibiotics.

In 46% of the 8,593 deliveries studied by the researchers, the mothers received antibiotics prior to delivery. Nearly half (45%) of the 96 babies that developed sepsis were infected by bacteria which were resistent to ampicillin, the antibiotic usually used in such cases. The resistant bacteria was much more common in infants whose mothers received antibiotics during pregnancy than in those whose mothers had not been subjected to the drug.

As in most studies involving the overuse of antibiotics, the researchers concluded that often they were unnecessary. In many cases, an antibiotic was administered to women who had viral infections -- a condition which does not respond to antibiotic therapy.

In other cases, the attending doctors routinely gave the women antibiotics if they showed any evidence of vaginal infection, in order to "protect" the infant. However, the research showed that the risk of giving antibiotics may far outweigh the risk of withholding it.