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posted by Fnord666 on Monday March 05 2018, @04:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the suppressing-results dept.

Antibiotic use is known to have a near-immediate impact on our gut microbiota and long-term use may leave us drug resistant and vulnerable to infection.

Now there is mounting laboratory evidence that in the increasingly complex, targeted treatment of cancer, judicious use of antibiotics also is needed to ensure these infection fighters don't have the unintended consequence of also hampering cancer treatment, scientists report.

Any negative impact of antibiotics on cancer treatment appears to go back to the gut and to whether the microbiota is needed to help activate the T cells driving treatment response, says Dr. Gang Zhou, immunologist at the Georgia Cancer Center and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.

"It likely depends on what types of therapy physicians are giving to patients and how often they also are giving them antibiotics," says Zhou, corresponding author of the study in the journal Oncotarget.

They have some of the first evidence that in some of the newest therapies, the effect of antibiotics is definitely mixed. Infections are typically the biggest complication of chemotherapy, and antibiotics are commonly prescribed to prevent and treat them.

"We give a lot of medications to prevent infections," says Dr. Locke Bryan, hematologist/oncologist at the Georgia Cancer Center and MCG.

"White blood cell counts can go so low that you have no defense against bacteria, and that overwhelming infection can be lethal," says Bryan, a study co-author.

In this high-stakes arena, where chemotherapy is increasingly packaged with newer immunotherapies, Bryan, Zhou and their colleagues have more evidence that antibiotics' impact on the microbiota can mean that T cells, key players of the immune response, are less effective and some therapies might be too.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Geezer on Tuesday March 06 2018, @05:44PM

    by Geezer (511) on Tuesday March 06 2018, @05:44PM (#648586)

    Aspirin, curcumin, roasted dandelion root tea, as well as pomegranate and resveratrol extracts.

    The tea was a happy discovery. Besides being a natural immune system booster, it tastes wonderful and makes for a decent bedtime toddy with honey and Bacardi 151. :)

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