Nature study links sugar intake during antibiotic treatment to worse gut microbiome damage
3 October 2026
A paper in Nature on 30 September 2026 tracked 9,419 meals eaten by 173 hospitalised patients undergoing blood cancer treatment.
It paired them with 1,009 stool microbiome samples.
Intake of sweets and sugars during antibiotic exposure predicted lowered alpha-diversity and greater expansion of the pathobiont Enterococcus.
Among patients with above-median sugar intake, longer antibiotic duration was linked to higher mortality risk.
In mice, sucrose with antibiotics increased Enterococcus expansion 16.3-fold on day 3 and 33.4-fold on day 6.
In plain words
Enterococcus A gut bacterial genus — Here a pathobiont that expands when the microbiome is disrupted.
Dysbiosis Imbalance of gut microbes — Loss of microbial diversity.