014 - Using Medicaid claims data to study obesity in early childhood: a mediation analysis.

Several studies find a positive relationship between antibiotic use in the first year of life and obesity in early childhood, or a higher risk of obesity with use of broad-spectrum antibiotics or multiple antibiotic courses. Most recommend the judicious use of antibiotics; however, this medical literature often fails to account for confounding indication from infections. The objectives of this research are to 1) determine if confounding by indication provides an explanation in the basic antibiotics-obesity analysis, 2) to test whether antibiotic use is a mediator of the infection – obesity relationship, and 3) examine which types of infection might drive the infection – obesity relationship. We demonstrate how a subgroup analysis of children from low income families utilizing Medicaid claims records can be used to test these hypotheses. A validation of the analysis is performed on a second dataset of merged EMR and Medicaid data to examine BMI measurements.

Medicaid, mediation, childhood obesity, antibiotics