
You are invited! Dr. David Patrick will be giving a presentation on Friday, January 24 at 9-10 AM (PST).
Presentation: Preventing Childhood Asthma and Allergy: The Neglected Impacts of Antibiotic Stewardship and Human Milk Exposure in Infants
Date: Friday, January 24 at 9-10 AM (PST)
Location:
In-person: Room B104, School of Population and Public Health, 2206 East Mall, Vancouver, BC Canada V6T 1Z3
Online: Zoom
If attending on Zoom, please register using the link below to receive the Zoom details.
https://ubc.zoom.us/meeting/register/DFAOEdtkQruV1pBdxUrg4g#/registration
About the presentation
Asthma is the most prevalent chronic disease of childhood in high income countries. The epidemic grew rapidly in the late 20th century but there are now signs of declining incidence and prevalence in several countries, especially where antibiotic use in infancy has fallen. Early infancy is a key period for immune system development under the influence of genetics, host biology and environment, including the developing gut microbiota. Perturbation of microbiota development may predispose to a higher risk of atopy. A recent meta-analysis of 51 studies concludes a roughly doubled risk of asthma for children who receive antibiotics in infancy. Such relationships were apparent within the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development Study (CHILD) where evaluation of the prospective cohort included assessment of gut microbiota. Importantly, breast feeding was found to substantially mitigate antibiotic-associated disruption of microbiota and asthma risk. Our recently concluded study of 600,000 Canadian children in two provinces shows that this association is operating in populations at a scale that may help to explain observed tempering of the asthma epidemic. We will address important critiques of this hypothesis (confounding by indication and reverse causation) and conclude with a discussion of next steps for research and possible implications for clinical and public health practice.
Objectives:
- To understand recent changes in childhood asthma epidemiology, possible explanations and correlation with changing antibiotic use in infancy
- To overview current evidence linking perturbation of the developing infant gut microbiota and subsequent experience of atopic disease.
- To summarize studies to date and provide detailed description of published findings from the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development Study
- To draw inference about effects at scale in population from a cohort study of 600,000 Canadian children from BC and Manitoba.
- To discuss current implications, knowledge gaps and future research.
No conflicts of interest. Work has been funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research.
About the speaker:

Dr. David Patrick is a respected public health leader, researcher and educator with expertise in epidemiology and infectious diseases. He joined the BCCDC in 1991, working on clinical and epidemiological approaches to sexually transmitted infections and HIV throughout the 1990s, and assuming leadership of the BCCDC’s epidemiology division in the 2000s. From 2011 to 2016, he was director of the UBC School of Population & Public Health, for which he was recognized for distinguished service. He serves as the Director of Research for BCCDC since 2020.
Dr. Patrick has developed his own graduate course, Control of Communicable Diseases, and has contributed to many others, including courses in medicine, dentistry and public health. He was responsible for the birth of the only tropical medicine course in western Canada.