For most parents, the fear lurks that something you did to help your
child -- supplements or prescriptions while pregnant, drugs during
labor, or vaccines, for example -- will later turn out to have been
harmful.
A British study shows that to have potentially been the case
for children of mothers who were given erythromycin during preterm
labor when the membranes were intact. Standard practice is to give it
when membranes have been ruptured prematurely, to lessen the risk of
infection to both mother and baby, and some doctors give antibiotics
even when the membranes remain intact but the mother has gone into
labor too early.
A study of more than 3,000 children whose
mothers participaited in a widespread health study when they were born
were tracked at age 7 to see what, if any, difficulties they may have
experienced as a result of getting antibiotics.
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