Antidepressants can also create super bacteria, producing intestinal bacteria that cannot be killed

Antidepressants can actually kill some bacteria or prevent them from growing.

E. coli were exposed to five common antidepressants at different doses and allowed to live in the presence of the different drugs for two months, followed by a total of 13 antibiotics.

Intuitively, all antidepressants promoted antibiotic resistance in E. coli, with sertraline and duloxetine being the most potent. These groups had the highest proportion of superbugs.

The higher the dose of antidepressants, the faster the E. coli developed antibiotic resistance and the more types of resistance it developed.

The researchers also found that bacteria grown under oxygen-rich conditions were more likely to develop drug resistance, while this effect was slightly weaker under oxygen-deficient conditions.

Antibiotics do not seem to be the only cause of the emergence of superbugs. Even other drug molecules can promote the evolution of bacteria and make them extremely resistant to antibiotics.

Antidepressants can induce mutation and enhance persistence toward multiple antibiotics. PNAS (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2208344120