Antibiotics may increase the risk of death in breast cancer patients. The information comes from a study published in the journal Nature Communications. As the analysis points out, this risk increased with the total number and types of antibiotics prescribed for each person.
The study points out that each additional antibiotic increased the risk of death between 5% and 18% compared to patients who did not receive the prescription. But the authors themselves stress the importance of interpreting these findings with caution.
“We cannot let life-threatening infections go untreated. The study suggests that we consider how best to treat them without increasing the risk of cancer recurrence,” say the researchers.
To arrive at this finding, the group studied 772 women diagnosed between January 2000 and May 2014. Treatment with antibiotics was associated with a decrease in the number of an immune cell called lymphocytes circulating in the blood.
Can antibiotics harm cancer patients?
The researchers’ theory is that the link between the antibiotics and the number of lymphocytes is in the gut, bearing in mind that the treatment can be especially harmful to the gut microbiome.
These bacteria not only help us digest food, but they also affect many aspects of our health, including how our immune systems respond to emerging threats such as infections or cancers. “We don’t yet know whether the microbiome is the critical connecting factor between antibiotic use and cancer outcomes, but we suspect it may be a key factor,” the authors state.
Source: Nature Communications via Futurity
