Many people turn to sugary food for comfort and energy when they're sick, but new research suggests it may come at a cost to the beneficial bacteria living in your gut. The research, which was led by scientists at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and NYU’s Langone Health in New York, and City of Hope Cancer Center in Los Angeles, analyzed more than 9,400 hospital meals and over 1,000 stool samples of blood cancer patients undergoing stem cell transplants. The September 30 study published in the journal Nature found that patients who consumed more sweets while taking antibiotics were more likely to experience a loss of gut microbiome diversity, a marker of healthy gut bacteria.
"Antibiotics disrupt the diversity of our gut bacteria, or microbiomes, which play an essential role in supporting our immune systems and overall health," said co-senior author Marcel van den Brink, M.D., Ph.D., president of City of Hope Los Angeles and City of Hope chief physician executive, in a statement. "Our research supports emerging evidence that avoiding sugary foods during antibiotic treatment may protect the microbiome. Preserving microbiome diversity has previously been linked with improved clinical outcomes for patients with cancer." Antibiotics are not used exclusively in cancer care.
They are commonly prescribed to treat and prevent certain bacterial infections, raising the question of whether people taking a routine course of antibiotics should also cut back on sugar. Newsweek discussed the findings with Dr. Opel Baker, a general practitioner and occupational health doctor, who was not involved in the study.
"This is interesting, but we have to be cautious about applying the findings to healthy adults," said Baker, who works at the Mayfield Clinic in Oxford, England. "The patients were undergoing stem cell transplantation for blood cancers, often following intensive treatment, so their immune systems and gut microbiomes were under considerable stress." He noted that someone taking a short course of antibiotics for a common infection is in a very different situation. While antibiotics can disrupt the gut microbiome, the study does not show that the same sugar-related effects occur in otherwise healthy people.
The five-year study followed 173 blood cancer patients undergoing stem cell transplants, a treatment that typically involves chemotherapy and often extensive antibiotic use. Researchers tracked more than 9,400 meals and analyzed over 1,000 stool samples to examine how diet and antibiotics affected the gut microbiome. Using statistical models, the team looked for factors linked to microbiome damage.
They focused on Enterococcus, a bacterium previously associated with serious complications in transplant patients. The team found that consuming more sugary foods while taking broad-spectrum antibiotics was linked to greater disruption of gut bacteria. Every additional 100 grams of sweets consumed per day, roughly the sugar content of a large milkshake, was associated with a 24 percent drop in bacterial diversity.
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