Scanning electron microscopy picture of a intestine bacterial group comprising (1:1.000.000). These interacting microorganisms type an ecosystem that’s very important to human well being. Drugs can sever-ely disrupt this fragile stability – they remove useful micro organism and thereby promote the expansion of dangerous species.Credit score: Picture produced by the Maier Lab (Lisa Maier, Anne Grießhammer, Leonardo Boldt) along with the Tübingen Structural Microscopy Core Facility (Michaela Wilsch-Bräuninger, Stefan Fischer); Colouring: Elke Neudert.
The human gut is dwelling to a dense community of microorganisms, identified collectively because the intestine microbiome, which actively helps to form our well being. The microorganisms assist with digestion, prepare the immune system and defend us in opposition to harmful intruders. Nonetheless, this safety may be disrupted, and never simply by antibiotics, which—when used for therapy—are supposed to forestall the expansion of pathogenic micro organism.
A brand new research exhibits that many medicines focusing on methods within the human physique can even change the microbiome in order that pathogens can colonize the intestine extra simply and trigger infections. The research, directed by Professor Lisa Maier of the Interfaculty Institute of Microbiology and An infection Drugs Tübingen (IMIT) and the Cluster of Excellence Controlling Microbes to Combat Infections (CMFI) on the College of Tübingen, has been printed in Nature.
The researchers studied 53 frequent non-antibiotics, together with allergy cures, antidepressants and hormone medication. Their results had been examined within the laboratory in artificial and actual human intestine microbial communities. The outcome was that about one-third of those medicines promoted the expansion of Salmonella, micro organism that may trigger extreme diarrhea.
Maier, senior writer of the research, says, “The scale of it was utterly unexpected. Many of these non-antibiotics inhibit useful gut bacteria, while pathogenic microbes such as Salmonella Typhimurium are impervious. This gives rise to an imbalance in the microbiome, which gives an advantage to the pathogens.”
Pathogens stay, protecting micro organism vanish
The researchers noticed the same impact in mice, the place sure medicines led to higher progress of Salmonella. The consequence was extreme illness development of salmonellosis, marked by fast onset and extreme irritation.
This concerned many layers of molecular and ecological interactions, report the research’s lead authors, Anne Grießhammer and Jacobo de la Cuesta from Maier’s analysis group: Drugs decreased the full biomass of the intestine microbiota, harmed biodiversity or particularly eradicated microbes that usually compete for vitamins with the pathogens. This resulted in a change within the microbiome, making a extra favorable surroundings for pathogenic microbes equivalent to Salmonella, which had been then in a position to proliferate unimpeded.
“Our results show that when taking medications we need to observe not only the desired therapeutic effect but also the influence on the microbiome,” says Grießhammer. “While the necessity of drugs is unnegotiable, even drugs with supposedly few side-effects can, so to speak, cause the microbial firewall in the intestine to collapse.”
Maier provides, “It’s already known that antibiotics can damage the gut microbiota. Now we have strong signs that many other medications can also harm this natural protective barrier unseen. This can be dangerous for frail or elderly people.”
Name to revise assessments of drug results
The researchers advocate that the impact of medicines on the microbiome must be systematically included in analysis throughout growth—particularly for drug lessons equivalent to antihistamines, antipsychotics or selective estrogen-receptor modulators in addition to for combos of a number of medicines.
Maier’s crew has developed a brand new high-throughput expertise, which shortly and reliably permits testing of how medicines affect the resilience of the microbiome below commonplace situations. These findings name for pharmaceutical analysis to be rethought: sooner or later, medicines must be assessed not solely pharmacologically, but in addition microbiologically.
“If you disrupt the microbiome, you open the door to pathogens—it is an integral component of our health and must be considered as such in medicine,” stresses Maier.
President Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. (Dôshisha) Karla Pollmann emphasizes, “Microbiome research in Tübingen has made an important discovery here. If the effect on the microbiome is incorporated in the development of medicinal products, the hope is that in the long term, patients could receive more suitable treatments with reduced side effects.”
Extra info:
Anne Grießhammer et al, Non-antibiotics disrupt colonization resistance in opposition to enteropathogens, Nature (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09217-2
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