Sugar Worsens Antibiotic Gut Damage, Cancer Study Finds — SkimNews
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- Jonathan Peled's team at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center tracked 158 blood cancer patients through chemotherapy and stem-cell transplants, logging 40,000-plus food items via tray questionnaires — finding every 100g increase in sugary foods during antibiotic treatment amplified microbiome diversity loss by 24%.
- Sugar combined with antibiotics fueled blooms of Enterococcus faecium, a pathogen linked to severe hospital-acquired infections, with the lead researchers calling it feeding 'last man standing' strains 'rocket fuel.'
- Mouse experiments confirmed the mechanism: the antibiotic biapenem plus a high-sucrose diet drove a 16.3-fold Enterococcus increase by day three and 33.4-fold by day six, while high sugar alone left bacterial diversity intact.
- Peled said the findings directly challenge standard cancer care, where doctors routinely recommend smoothies and milkshakes to boost nutritional intake — advice that may need reevaluation when patients are simultaneously on antibiotics.
- Nicola Segata at the University of Trento, who was not involved in the study, said pathogens likely thrive directly on sugar while beneficial fiber-feeding bacteria lose their competitive edge during antibiotic disruption, and recommended diverse plant-based foods afterward to help beneficial bacteria recolonize.
Why it matters: For the millions prescribed antibiotics each year, skipping sugary foods during the course is a low-cost behavioral change that could meaningfully reduce collateral microbiome damage. The urgency is highest for cancer patients undergoing stem-cell transplants, where greater gut microbiome diversity is linked to better survival — making the common practice of prescribing high-sugar nutritional supplements to exactly these patients a direct collision with the new findings.
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