For some cancer patients, eating sweets worsens antibiotics’ disruption of gut bacteria

Sugary diets and antibiotics impact the gut microbiome. Now, researchers are exploring these two effects combined.

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Sugary diets and antibiotics impact the gut microbiome. Now, researchers are exploring these two effects combined.

Jorg Greuel/Photodisc/Getty Images

While a spoonful of sugar might help us gulp down a bitter-tasting antibiotic, it also may increase the damage that these drugs cause to the gut microbes.

In patients being treated for blood cancers, eating sugary items during antibiotic treatment was linked to a greater reduction in gut bacteria diversity than taking the antibiotics alone.…