How sugar intake interacts with antibiotics to affect blood cancer patients' gut health

Researchers from the City of Hope National Medical Center, the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center (Sloan-Kettering), and NYU Grossman School of Medicine have published a five-year study in Nature examining the impact of diet and antibiotics on the gut microbiome of blood cancer patients. The study involved analyzing over 1,000 gut microbiome samples and recording more than 40,000 meals from patients undergoing aggressive chemotherapy and stem cell transplantation. The goal was to determine how the interaction between dietary habits and antibiotic use affects the microbiota of immunocompromised individuals. The findings indicate that broad-spectrum antibiotics suppress various groups of protective bacteria. This effect was significantly amplified by sugar consumption: for every 100 grams of sugary products consumed per day-roughly the equivalent of one large milkshake-there was an additional 24% decrease in bacterial diversity.