Taking antibiotics and eating sweets? Study reveals massive increase in "this type of bacteria" in the intestines

2026/10/07 12:06

The latest research found that eating more sweets during antibiotic treatment led to a significant decrease in the diversity of intestinal bacteria and was related to an increase in enterococci; the picture shows a situational photo. (Picture taken from freepik)

[Compiled by Chen Chengliang/Comprehensive Report] When taking antibiotics, if you consume a lot of sweets at the same time, the intestinal flora may be more seriously disturbed. The latest research has found that this dietary combination will increase the number of specific bacteria originally present in the intestines, and the diversity of intestinal bacteria will also decrease.

CNN reported that a study published in Nature was jointly conducted by researchers from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and other institutions in the United States. It analyzed 173 cancer patients who received hematopoietic cell transplants and tracked 9,419 hospital meals and 1,009 stool samples they consumed during their hospitalization. The results found that the more sweets eaten during antibiotic treatment, the more obvious the decline in intestinal bacterial diversity was.

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Enterococci take advantage of bacterial flora imbalance to expand massively

Researchers found that when sweet food intake increased, enterococcus (Enterococcus) in the intestines also increased. This bacteria can normally exist in the intestines, but after being affected by antibiotics, the number of other bacteria decreases, and enterococci may lose competition and further expand in large numbers, including Enterococcus faecium, which may cause bloodstream infections.

Research analysis found that during antibiotic treatment, the more sweets eaten, the fewer types of intestinal bacteria and the lower the overall diversity. Research estimates that for every 100 grams of sweets intake, the diversity of intestinal bacteria in feces decreases by approximately 24%.

The study also analyzed patients' clinical outcomes and found that those with higher sugar intake had an approximately 12% increased risk of death after transplantation. However, the study subjects were cancer patients who received hematopoietic cell transplantation, and the study was not randomly assigned to different diets. Therefore, this result cannot directly infer that ordinary people who eat sweets while taking antibiotics will have the same risk of infection or death.

The study authors pointed out that current results show that ingesting large amounts of simple sugars during antibiotic treatment may further aggravate the imbalance of intestinal bacteria; however, whether this effect can be reduced by adjusting diet still requires further research in other patient groups and different antibiotic use scenarios.