Scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard found a link between the use of antibiotics by middle-aged women and cognitive decline later in life.
The research is published in PLOS ONE.
Previous research has found a connection between gut health and mental health—communication between the gut and the central nervous system has been labeled the gut-brain axis.
And some studies have found a strong link between problems in the gut and mental diseases, such as depression and schizophrenia.
Researchers showed that antibiotic use can lead to serious disruptions in the microbiome.
In the current study, the team found a link between antibiotic use by women during middle age and a larger than normal degree of cognitive decline.
They used data from the Nurses’ Health Study II and focused on middle-aged female nurses (mean 54.7 years).
They analyzed data from 15,129 female nurses describing antibiotics use and the results of cognitive scores collected several years later, comparing those who took antibiotics over different duration periods with those who did not.
The cognitive tests measured thinking speed, attention, learning and memory.
The researchers found that the nurses who had taken antibiotics for at least two months scored lower on the cognitive tests (taken seven years later) than the nurses who had taken antibiotics for a shorter period of time, or not at all.
The findings suggest the decline was approximately equivalent to three to four years of aging.
If you care about health, please read studies about antioxidant drug that could protect against stroke and heart attack, and drug combo that could halve the risk of heart attack, stroke.
For more information about brain health, please see recent studies that keeping your brain active could delay Alzheimer’s dementia 5 years, and results showing Mediterranean diet may strongly prevent dementia, memory loss.
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