“Antibiotics and Bowel Diseases”

• Irrational use of antibiotics can cause antimicrobial resistant bacteria and directly affect host cells.
• A study found that even short-course antibiotic treatment can damage the mucus barrier, allowing microbes to contact host tissues, triggering an immune response and causing intestinal inflammation.
• The mucus barrier is a hallmark of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs).
• Four different antibiotics—ampicillin, metronidazole, neomycin, and vancomycin—were found to break down the mucus barrier, leading to bacteria encroachment on colonic epithelium.
• Vancomycin impeded mucus secretion of goblet cells in the colon in a microbiotaindependent manner.