Long-term antibiotic use linked to higher risk of bowel cancer precursor; new app aims to take fear out of flying
MyFlight Forecast tells you what the weather will be during your flight and how likely turbulence and flight delays are. In other health news: the longer you use antibiotics the more likely you are to develop colon polyps
Long-term antibiotics increase cancer risk
Long-term use of antibiotics increases the risk later in life of developing colon polyps, often a precursor of bowel cancer, researchers said on Wednesday. The findings, published in the journal Gut, add to evidence that the digestive tract’s complex network of bacteria may play a key role in the cancer’s emergence.
Earlier research has linked antibiotic use to developing bowel cancer but the potential association with these abnormal growths had not been explored. To find out more, Andrew Chan of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston combed through health records for 16,642 women who were 60 or older in 2004.
The women were enrolled in the Nurses Health Study, which has been following the health of 121,700 nurses in the United States since 1976. The nurses’ medication is included in the monitoring. The women examined in the new study had had at least one colonoscopy between 2004 and 2010. During that period, 1,195 cases of polyps were diagnosed.
The researchers found an increased risk of polyps among women who had taken antibiotics for a total of two months or more over a two-decade span. Women who did so in their 20s and 30s had a 36 per cent greater chance of polyps forming compared to counterparts who did not extensively use antibiotics. The risk jumped by 70 per cent in women who took antibiotics for at least two months while they were in their 40s and 50s.