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"XXX Vcerossijscoye Soveshaniye po Problemam Vysshej Nervnoj Deyatelnoste", posvyashennoye 150-letiyu so dna rozhdeniya IP Pavlova (May 15-18), 2000, p.546.
Early intake of antibiotics in children increases the risk of stuttering onset.
Nabieva T.N.
Brain Institute of Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, 105064, per. Obukha 5, Moscow, Russia.
It is well known that antibiotics cause convulsive activity in animals neocortex after the application and its injection into the cerebral cortex. Antibiotics increase the sensibility of certain neuron groups, activity of which are synchronizing and initiate discharges in other cortical cells. Local cortical application of antibiotics on cerebral cortex evoked not only local spikes, but discharges in cortical areas receiving efferent fibers from the excited area. Consequences of the intake of antibiotics are not yet investigated sufficiently to provide conclusions about its influence on a child's nervous system. By investigating the stuttering risk factors, we examined case histories of 40 stuttering children (age 2.2 - 7). We chose only children without stuttering in family. We revealed that 22 of them had a birth trauma - asphyxia neonatorum, and its consequences, subsequently, played a decisive role in the stuttering origin. The other 18 were born without complications, but all of them took antibiotics within the first year of life (n=10) or before reaching the age of 3 (n=8). The medicaments were prescribed by physicians for treatment of various somatic diseases before the stuttering origin. In the case of taking antibiotics within the first year of life, a child usually began to speak and stutter simultaneously. If the child had a fluent speech period, stuttering began within 2 weeks after a drug withdrawal, or during the following 3-5 months as a result of provoking stressful incident. It is surprising that extraordinary events connected with the stuttering origin were so insignificant that they hardly could evoke strong stress in a healthy child. For example, one 3 year old boy saw a small worm on a wall, another had a nightmare, while the third was unexpectedly loudly called by a friend. Obviously, no healthy child would begin to stutter after such incidents. Despite the absence of direct evidences, we suppose that taking antibiotics in early childhood is the provoking factor for stuttering origin. Risk is increasing directly proportionally to the amount of medicaments and inversely proportionally to a child's age. Thus, the antibiotics in early childhood, as well as asphyxia neonatorum and stuttering in family is one of the main risk factors for the stuttering origin.
Key words: stuttering, asphyxia neonatorum, antibiotics.
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