Antibiotics can have a severely detrimental and potentially long-lasting effect on your gut, lowering volume and diversity of good (commensal) bacteria, increasing levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, causing a loss of immune memory, and even risk of new infections with new pathogens.
Antibiotics are potential life-savers. But you need to balance the benefits with the risks they create.
There’s some serious science on the ability of not just antibiotics but of every day prescription drugs like beta-blockers and blood thinners (8) to damage your microbiome and immune system in many ways. Just a single course of antibiotics can significantly alter the gut microbiome of a healthy person and it can then take months or even years to recover the volume and diversity of the good species. And, be clear, there are no 'mild' antibiotics despite what some oncologists have been known to tell patients.
i) Antibiotics lower the volume of good bacteria, not just pathogens, in your microbiome.
ii) Antibiotics thus lower your production of helpful compounds such as anti-inflammatory compounds, Serotonin, B vitamins and vitamin K; and the crucial SCFAs like propionate, acetate and butyrate essential to your metabolism and good health.
iii) Antibiotics increase the number of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the gut, risking future infection and auto-immune disease.
iv) Antibiotics reduce the number and types of antibodies you make further risking future serious infection. They can increase the number of pathogens that can cause MRSA and C. difficile and recurrent infections such as sepsis, UTIs and more.
v) Antibiotics cause a loss of cancer-attacking T-lymphocytes and Natural Killer cells
vi) Antibiotics cause a loss of memory on your adaptive B-lymphocyte system, exposing you to recurrent infections.
vii) Antibiotics reduce cancer survival times - lowering lymphocytes lowers cancer survival.
viii) Antibiotics have been linked to a greater risk of lung cancer, colorectal cancer and breast cancer, to name just three. This is covered in our article Antibiotics linked to cancer.
But there's more you need to understand -
a) The volume and diversity of your microbiome don't just 'come back' after a while. The damage can last for years. And a poor microbiome links to more cancer recurrence.
b) You need to take action to rebuild your microbiome yourself.
c) People who rebuild their microbiome after antibiotics or conventional cancer therapies, survive longer that people who don't.
One study stated that antibiotics 'scar' your microbiome. Now you can see why! Let's look at some of the research.
Antibiotics and your microbiome - much more serious than previously thought
Back in 2018 there we covered research from Memorial Sloan Kettering, where people had 2 drugs, for 4 rounds; then a stem cell transplant, with antibiotics for one month. Just over half of the participants had a fecal transplant from their own stored stools, and this took their microbiome back above 75% of normal healthy levels within a few days. The other participants just followed ‘Standard of care’ and one year later, their microbiome was still just 27% of that of a healthy person (1).
In 2021 we covered research (2) from the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute that chemotherapy drugs destroyed the gut microbiome, altering volume and diversity with a reduction in commensal (good) bacteria e.g. Firmicutes, but an increase in gram negative bacteria, Bacteroidetes and Proteobacteria. Basically, this means that when a patient is trying to recover after the chemotherapy and continue to fight cancer, their gut microbiome is helping them less than it was before the chemotherapy and antibiotics. In fact it is now hindering them!
As yet, there is no research to detail to what degree outcomes and survival times might suffer. But the first clues may come from recent research on antibiotics.
How antibiotics increase resistant bacteria and promote illness
Francisco Guarner, a digestive system researcher at the University Hospital Vall d’Hebron in Barcelona, has described the gut microbiome as an ecosystem that is perturbed by antibiotics in much the same way as other drugs. He summarised recent studies, "When you take antibiotics, some bacteria in the network disappear, while others overgrow, so the balance is different. Also in this new balance, what you gain are bacteria that are more resistant to antibiotics.”
Infections caused by antibiotic resistant bacteria are serious. They are known to pose a threat to life. What is now known is that everybody has antibiotic-resistant genes in their gut microbiome. That per se is not a problem. We've come to live with them. But, it becomes a serious problem when the pathogens (the bad bacteria) become antibiotic-resistant - that's when the real problems set in. Recent research (3) from Birmingham, England, showed that in a gut weakened by antibiotics, antibiotic-resistant genes, which can actually spread by 'Horizontal Gene Transfer', (HGT), are more likely to do exactly that and make matters worse.
Antibiotics can start a downward spiral
No one here is saying that you should not take antibiotics. Just be more careful in your decisions. Especially when you know that half are given for illnesses they cannot actually treat.
What we are looking at is how you can start a downward spiral by using them - drugs and/or antibiotics potentially reduce the volume of the microbiome and lower the number of good species; this causes more pathogenic species (as there are less good ones keeping them in check); and these pathogens may then gain antibiotic resistance. This could clearly promote illness - all in someone who is trying to get better and beat their illness.
Pathogens and Antibiotic- and Drug-Resistance
A little under 5 million deaths across the world in 2019 were associated with drug or antibiotic-resistance (4). Scientists even know the 6 top pathogens that have gained antibiotic or drug resistance - E coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Acinetobacter baumannii.
Worse, 1.2 million deaths in Hospitals in Europe are directly attributable to antibiotic resistance (5). So you can go into a hospital, develop sepsis, Clostridium diff, or MRSA, and antibiotic resistance will kill you!?
No such thing as a safe antibiotic - 'Antibiotic scarring'
Research from Sloan Kettering is now showing (6) that good normally healthy bacteria following antibiotics, can pick up antibiotic-resistant genes (ARGs) and these new rogues even help to destroy the antibiotics, further protecting the pathogens! There's no such thing as a safe antibiotic, it's delusional thinking.
Now, the antibiotics are potentially helping your bacterial enemies by providing another line of defence. How many times have we heard of patients taking further rounds of antibiotics because their infection came back?
Of course, no one takes an antibiotic if they are well, although we do know that, in the UK, approximately 50% of antibiotics are prescribed for infections they cannot treat (e.g. viral infections such as colds, coughs, flu). WebMD lists the top 5 generic antibiotics as amoxicillin, doxycycline, cephalexin, ciprofloxacin and clindamycin.
The fact is that people who take antibiotics and/or drugs almost certainly have an issue in their microbiome before the treatment. But. There's a real chance that just a round of antibiotics can make matters much worse.
Another new study (7) where people were separated into four distinct groups, showed that antibiotics affected different people differently, and this may have been due to the strength of the microbiome before taking the antibiotics.
Unfortunately, even after a short spell of antibiotics, the microbiome could still be seriously disturbed in some people 6 months later. Three people in the study were described as having a microbiome similar to patients in an ICU, after 6 months! The researchers called it 'antibiotic scarring'!
Antibiotics have a major and negative effect on the gut microbiome
In summary, the researchers said that antibiotics can have a major detrimental effect on the microbiome. People are cautioned from taking antibiotics unless they are sure the benefits outweigh the risks and they are certain they have a bacterial infection.
Cancer patients should remember that the US 'Human Microbiome Project' was very clear: 'You gut gets ill first, then you get ill'. And, 'You can't get better until your gut gets better'. Some chap called Hippocrates said much the same thing 2500 years ago, probably in Greek, but he didn't have any research.
There is an alternative to antibiotics - it's called Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation. If you click this link, we have an article on UBI.
At a very minimum, after you have had conventional cancer treatment and/or antibiotics, you should always rebuild your microbiome. There is research on this website showing that women with breast cancer who do rebuild live significantly longer than those who don't. How do you rebuild your Gut?
Go to: Heal your gut, heal your body
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References
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Fecal transplants restore gut microbes after antibiotics; Drs. Ying Taur, Eric Pamer, and Joao Xavier, Science Translational Medicine on September 26, 2018.
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Conventional myelosuppressive chemotherapy for non-haematological malignancy disrupts the intestinal microbiome; Lito E. Papanicolas, Sarah K. Sims, Steven L. Taylor, Sophie J. Miller, Christos S. Karapetis, Steve L. Wesselingh, David L. Gordon & Geraint B. Rogers; BMC Cancer volume 21, Article number: 591 (2021)
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Horizontal transfer of antibiotic resistance genes in the human gut microbiome; Ross S. McInnes, Gregory E. McCallum, Lisa E. Lamberte, Willem van Schaik; Current Opinion in Microbiology Vol 53; February 2020, Pages 35-43
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Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance in 2019; the Lancet, vol 399, Jan 19 2022
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A Systematic Review of Antibiotic Resistance Trends for Hospital-Acquired Multidrug-Resistant Infections (Cureus 2022)
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Antibiotic Degradation by Commensal Microbes Shields Pathogens; Mergim Gjonbalaj, James W. Keith, Mytrang H. D, Tobias M. Hohl, Eric G. Pamer, and Simone Becattini; Infect Immun; 2020 Apr; 88(4)
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Acute and persistent effects of commonly used antibiotics on the gut microbiome and resistome in healthy adults;Winston E Anthony et al; Cell Reports; Volume 39, Issue 2, 110649, April 12 2022
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How prescription drugs damage your microbiome and your immune system - https://chriswoollamshealthwatch.com/blog/prescription-drugs-alter-the-microbiome-for-better-or-worse/
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