F
Fred Bloggs
Guest
The emergence of disease-causing bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics is often attributed to the overuse of antibiotics in people and livestock. But researchers have homed in on another potential driver of resistance: antidepressants. By studying bacteria grown in the laboratory, a team has now tracked how antidepressants can trigger drug resistance1.
âEven after a few days exposure, bacteria develop drug resistance, not only against one but multiple antibiotics,â says senior author Jianhua Guo, who works at the Australian Centre for Water and Environmental Biotechnology at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. This is both interesting and scary, he says.
Research was strictly laboratory controlled and did not involve human subjects. But it does point up the relatively unknown effects in general of prescription drugs on beneficial commensal bacteria necessary for good health and immunity from pathogens.
Lisa Maier, who is based at the University of Tübingen in Germany and studies interactions between drugs and the microbiome, says that to understand how antidepressants can drive antibiotic resistance, researchers need to determine what molecules the drugs are targeting in the bacteria and to assess the effects of the medications on a wider variety of clinically relevant bacterial species. In 2018, Maier and her colleagues surveyed 835 medicines that did not target microbes and found that 24% inhibited the growth of at least one strain of human gut bacteria4.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00186-y
It\'s not enough that antibiotic production can\'t keep up with demand and is in short supply, they\'re also becoming less and less effective.
Stuff like this happens:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/19/health/first-us-multidrug-resistant-gonorrhea/index.html
Cook your food thoroughly.
âEven after a few days exposure, bacteria develop drug resistance, not only against one but multiple antibiotics,â says senior author Jianhua Guo, who works at the Australian Centre for Water and Environmental Biotechnology at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. This is both interesting and scary, he says.
Research was strictly laboratory controlled and did not involve human subjects. But it does point up the relatively unknown effects in general of prescription drugs on beneficial commensal bacteria necessary for good health and immunity from pathogens.
Lisa Maier, who is based at the University of Tübingen in Germany and studies interactions between drugs and the microbiome, says that to understand how antidepressants can drive antibiotic resistance, researchers need to determine what molecules the drugs are targeting in the bacteria and to assess the effects of the medications on a wider variety of clinically relevant bacterial species. In 2018, Maier and her colleagues surveyed 835 medicines that did not target microbes and found that 24% inhibited the growth of at least one strain of human gut bacteria4.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00186-y
It\'s not enough that antibiotic production can\'t keep up with demand and is in short supply, they\'re also becoming less and less effective.
Stuff like this happens:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/19/health/first-us-multidrug-resistant-gonorrhea/index.html
Cook your food thoroughly.