It is well known that antibiotic treatment affects the bacteria in the gut. This is not surprising, since the purpose of the treatment is to kill bacteria. For some groups, this side effect is particularly severe, and researchers have long been looking for ways to protect the gut.
Now American researchers may be onto something. In a study of patients with blood cancer who were hospitalized for stem cell transplants, researchers found differences depending on what the patients ate. The patients received one or more courses of antibiotics.
Check your diet
Because the patients were hospitalized, the researchers were able to track what they ate and, with the help of the kitchen, record the contents of their meals.
A total of 173 patients, who collectively ate more than 9,000 meals, were included in the study, published in the journal Nature. Most of them underwent stool analyses to map their gut flora.
The findings surprised the researchers. Patients who ate more sweets during their antibiotic treatment were at higher risk of having less diverse gut flora. The “bad” bacteria then gained a stronger foothold.
It is reasonable that diet has an effect, especially in such an extreme situation as when large parts of the intestinal flora have been eliminated with antibiotics, says Tove Fall, professor of molecular epidemiology at Uppsala University, who also researches intestinal flora and antibiotics.
Special patient group
She points out that the results need to be confirmed in more studies, but that they provide interesting insights. However, it cannot be said that avoiding sugar during antibiotic treatment for a common infection helps.
"This is a special group of patients who received immunosuppressive drugs, and many of them were treated with broad-spectrum antibiotics. We also don't know whether those who ate the most sweets differed from other patients in other ways that affect the gut flora," she says.
But the results are very exciting, she continues. Many people would like to find a way to protect the gut during antibiotic treatment.
There is no clear evidence that probiotics help the intestinal flora recover, so if we could find answers in the diet, it would be valuable, she says.