Key clinical point: Over 6 years of prospective follow-up found no association between recent antibiotic use and subsequent risk for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) later in life.
Major finding: Compared with no antibiotic usage, short-term (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR] 0.88; 95% CI 0.38-1.38) and middle-to-long-term (aHR 1.06; 95% CI 0.42-1.71) antibiotic use was not associated with an increased risk for RA.
Study details: The study included 1,33,125 female participants from Nurses' Health Study (NHS; n=58,757) and NHS II (n=74,368) databases. Based on antibiotic usage, participants were categorized into nonuse, short-term use (1-14 days), and middle-to-long-term use (15 or more days) groups.
Disclosures: This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China, the Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Digestive Cancer Research, the Startup Fund for the 100 Top Talents Program, the Sun Yat-sen University, and the National Institutes of Health. All the authors reported no conflict of interests.
Source: Liu Y et al. Expert Opin Drug Saf. 2021 Aug 25. doi: 10.1080/14740338.2021.1970134 .