Taking antibiotics? Sugar may be making the damage worse
Eating more sugar while taking antibiotics was linked to greater disruption of the gut microbiome and increased growth of potentially harmful bacteria. Researchers say temporarily cutting back on sweets during and after antibiotic treatment could be a simple way to reduce this damage, though clinical trials are still needed.
Key points
- Extra sugar during antibiotics may worsen gut bacteria disruption, a new study finds.
- Each 100g more sugar linked to 21% greater decline in bacterial diversity.
- Mouse tests showed sucrose raised gut Enterococcus up to 33.4-fold by day 6.
Eating more sugar while taking antibiotics may worsen the drugs' disruption of beneficial gut bacteria, according to new research published online Sept. 30 in the journal Nature.
Researchers from NYU Langone Health, City of Hope and Memorial Sloan Kettering monitored 9,419 meals eaten by 173 hospitalized cancer patients and tracked daily changes in their gut microbiomes.
What the study found
For every additional 100 grams of sugar consumed in the 48 hours before treatment, the researchers observed an additional 21% decline in alpha diversity, a measure of beneficial bacterial variety in the gut.
Sugary diets combined with antibiotics were also associated with increases in Enterococcus faecium, a species linked to infections that can be difficult to treat. In mice given the antibiotic biapenem while eating dietary sucrose, the gut Enterococcus population rose 16.3-fold by day 3 and 33.4-fold by day 6.
Our study, which used more than 9,000 recorded meals, suggests that modifying diet during and after antibiotics, specifically by reducing sweets intake, could help with that.
— Jonas Schluter
Why blood cancer patients
The team focused on people with blood cancers because they often receive antibiotics and their meals can be closely monitored during hospitalization. Patients receiving stem cell transplants are frequently hospitalized for weeks during chemotherapy and antibiotic treatment, when both diet and gut microbiomes change dramatically.
The researchers say dietary sugar may amplify antibiotic-caused microbiome disruption because harmful bacteria that survive treatment can use the sugars to expand. They stress that more work is needed to determine how sugar produces the effect and whether dietary changes improve patient outcomes.
