New Delhi– While antibiotics are widely known to disturb the gut microbiome, a new study has found that several commonly prescribed non-antibiotic drugs can also alter gut bacteria and increase the risk of gastrointestinal infections.
Researchers at Yale University in the United States identified several non-antibiotic medications that affect the gut microbiome. In at least one case, they observed that the drug triggered mice to produce antimicrobial agents that targeted their own gut microbes, leading to greater vulnerability to infection.
The findings, published in the journal Nature, suggest that the gut microbiome may play a critical role in how individuals respond to medications and could become a target for improving drug effectiveness and safety.
A disrupted microbiome is associated with reduced colonization resistance, making it more difficult for beneficial microbes to fend off harmful pathogens. As a result, individuals with such imbalances are at a higher risk of developing gastrointestinal infections.
For the study, the research team analyzed over ten years of medical and pharmacy records from one million anonymized individuals enrolled in a universal health insurance plan in Montreal, Canada. They found that certain prescription drugs increased the risk of gut infections to a degree comparable with antibiotics.
“We found prescription drugs that increased people’s risk of infections to the same degree that antibiotics would,” said Andrew Goodman, professor and chair of microbial pathogenesis at Yale School of Medicine.
Based on the data, researchers selected 21 drugs for further analysis. Mice were treated with each of these drugs, and fecal samples were collected before and after treatment to monitor changes in the microbiome.
About half of the drugs studied were linked to significant changes in gut microbial composition. Four drugs in particular—digoxin (used for heart failure), clonazepam (used for seizures and anxiety), pantoprazole (a stomach acid reducer), and quetiapine (an antipsychotic)—were associated with an increased risk of infection following exposure to pathogens.
The findings highlight a previously underappreciated risk associated with common medications and point to the gut microbiome as a key factor in drug response and patient outcomes. (Source: IANS)
