Antibiotic Resistance Induced by the Widespread Use of Antidepressants?
Freeman writes:
Bacteria evolve drug resistance more readily when antidepressants are around:
Jianhua Guo is a professor at the Australian Centre for Water and Environmental Biotechnology. His research focuses on removing contaminants from wastewater and the environmental dimensions of antimicrobial resistance. One of those dimensions is the overuse of antibiotics, which promotes resistance to these drugs.
Guo wondered if the same might hold true for other types of pharmaceuticals as well. His lab found that they definitely do. Specific antidepressants-SSRIs and SNRIs-promote resistance to different classes of antibiotics. This resistance is heritable over 33 bacterial generations, even once the antidepressant is removed.
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Antibiotic resistance is an enormous threat to human health. Since antidepressants are prescribed and used in such massive quantities, the fact that they can induce antibiotic resistance should not be considered one of the more trivial of their side effects. It might even be taken into account in the design of new, more effective antidepressants.PNAS, 2023. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2208344120
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