If you take a medication and it doesn’t work, are your gut microbes to blame? How are scientists using digital tools to explore drug-gut microbiota interactions—and why are these insights important?

ASM presents Microbial Minutes, a monthly video series of trending topics in the microbial sciences.

Gut bacteria influence the activity, efficacy and even side effects of medications. Here, we explore how pharmaceutical drugs impact the gut microbiota, and vice versa. We also discuss the use of computational resources to better understand these complex interactions, and their potential utility in clinical care. Papers and key take-away points discussed in this Microbial Minutes are listed below.

Take-Aways

The activity and efficacy of pharmaceutical drugs are influenced by interactions with the gut microbiota.

Improved understanding of these interactions could inform personalized, microbiome-informed treatment regimens.

Such knowledge depends on digital tools for analyzing the drug degradation, metabolism and biotransformation capabilities of complex microbial communities.

Key Resources

Understanding Drug-Microbiota Interactions: Weersma R.K., et al. Interactions between drugs and the gut microbiome. Gut. May 14, 2020.

AGORA2 Digital Database: Heinkin A., et al. Genome-scale metabolic reconstruction of 7,302 human microorganisms for personalized medicine. Nature Biotechnology. Jan. 19, 2023.

The Gut Microbiota and Statins: Wilmanski T., et al. Heterogeneity in statin response explained by variation in the human gut microbiome. Med. June 10, 2022.

Gut Bacteria and Levodopa: Rekdal V. M., et al. Discovery and inhibition of an interspecies gut bacterial pathway for Levodopa metabolism. Science. June 14, 2019.

Drugs can Kill Gut Bugs: Maier L., et al. Extensive impact of non-antibiotic drugs on human gut bacteria. Nature. March 19, 2018.

Metformin and the Microbiota: Wu H., et al. Metformin alters the gut microbiome of individuals with treatment-naive type 2 diabetes, contributing to the therapeutic effects of the drug. Nature Medicine. May 22, 2017.

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