Your intestinal bacteria could affect your response to medications

Have you ever wondered why a drug that works for someone else does not seem to work for you? You may want to check your instinct for the answer.

Researchers have identified the intestinal bacterium that treats more than 150 drugs, which has also identified genes conferring this ability.

The findings highlight the role played by intestinal bacteria in patients' response to medications, according to the Yale University team.

"It is possible that we can use genes or species of bacteria to predict the ability of an individual's intestinal flora to metabolize a certain drug," said Maria Zimmermann-Kogadeeva, co-author of the drug. study, in a press release issued by a university.

"The work is a first step in identifying biomarkers that could help doctors prescribe the safest and most effective drugs for each patient," Zimmermann-Kogadeeva added. She is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory's lead author of the study, Andrew Goodman, of the Yale Institute of Microbial Sciences and Department of Microbial Pathogenesis.

For the new study, researchers investigated whether and how 271 drugs are chemically modified by 76 types of intestinal bacteria. The results showed that almost two-thirds of the drugs were metabolized by at least one of the bacterial species.

The researchers then identified many genes that allow the bacteria to metabolize drugs.

The team found large variations in the number of these genes in healthy people. In some cases, these differences explain why some populations of intestinal bacteria (microbiomes) metabolize drugs quickly, while others act with the same drugs slowly or not at all.

The Goodman team noted that it was once thought that drug metabolism was only performed by organs, such as the liver.

"We hope this study will provide a useful first step in understanding the contribution of the microbiome to drug metabolism," said lead co-author Michael Zimmermann in a press release. He is a postdoctoral fellow at the Goodman Laboratory.

"We believe these approaches could shed light on how the gut microbiome also modulates our response to non-drug compounds, such as food nutrients and environmental agents," Zimmermann said.

The study was published June 3 in the journal Nature.

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