People who develop type 2 diabetes tend to take more antibiotics in the years prior to the diagnosis than individuals who do not have disorder, according to a new study, whose conclusions are published in 'Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & AMP;Metabolism '.

A person develops diabetes, characterized by high levels of blood sugar, when the individual cannot produce enough insulin hormone or insulin does not work properly to eliminate blood sugar.More than 29 million Americans have diabetes, according to the Endocrinology Society, being type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease, with between 90 and 95 percent of all cases.

"In our research, we find people who have type 2 diabetes use more antibiotics up to 15 years before diagnosis compared to healthy controls," says one of the study authors, Kristian Hallundbæk Mikkelsen, from the Gentofte hospital in Hellerup, Denmark.

"Although we cannot infer the causality of this study, the results pose the possibility that antibiotics could increase the risk of type 2 diabetes. Another explanation may be that people develop type 2 diabetes over the years and faceA higher risk of infection during that time, "he adds.

As part of the study of cases and population base controls, the researchers tracked antibiotic prescriptions for 170,504 people who had type 2 diabetes and 1.3 million people without diabetes.The scientists identified the subjects using data from three national health records in Denmark.

People with type 2 diabetes had 0.8 antibiotic recipes per year, on average, while the prescription rate for control subjects was 0.5 prescriptions per year.People with more recipes were more likely to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Many types of existing antibiotics were linked to a greater risk of diabetes, but there was no stronger link with the use of reduced spectrum antibiotics such as penicillin V.

previous research

Previous investigations have shown that antibiotic treatments can alter bacteria in the intestine of an individual.Some analyzes suggest that certain intestinal bacteria can contribute to the deterioration of the ability to metabolize the sugar seen in people with diabetes.This can explain why higher antibiotic rates are related to the development of type 2 diabetes, but more research is needed to explain the findings, according to Mikkelsen.

"Diabetes is one of the biggest challenges of modern health care, with a growing incidence worldwide. Additional long -term research on the use of antibiotics in sugar metabolism and the composition of intestinal bacteria could revealValuable responses on how to address this public health crisis.