A new study by researchers at Stanford Medicine associates the use of antimicrobials (a class of drugs that includes antibiotics to treat bacterial infections and antifungals to treat fungal infections) with an increased risk of cancer recurrence and/or death that lasts three or more years after the participants’ initial cancer diagnoses. Why is that? It has to do with the fact that antimicrobials not only kill harmful bacteria, but can wreak havoc in your body’s natural gut biome by killing off your body’s beneficial bacteria.
According to Dr. Julia Ransohoff of Stanford: “We’ve long known that the gut microbiome plays a role in shaping the immune system and that the immune system is pivotal in how people respond to cancers and chemotherapy. We found a surprisingly strong and sustained increased risk of death in patients who had received multiple antimicrobials any time during the three years after their initial diagnosis.”
Read the entire article here: Antibiotics after breast cancer linked to poorer survival, Stanford Medicine-led study finds”
