Common gut bacteria can make diabetes, cancer drugs less effective: Study

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Yale University in the US showed that gut bacteria metabolises oral drugs that target cellular receptors called GPCRs.

Drugs that act on GPCRs, or G protein-coupled receptors, include more than 400 medications approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of many common conditions such as migraines, depression, type 2 diabetes, prostate cancer, and more.

“Understanding how GPCR-targeted drugs interact with human gut microbiota is critical for advancing personalised medicine initiatives,” said Qihao Wu, Assistant Professor at the Pitt School of Pharmacy.

“This research could help open up new avenues for drug design and therapeutic optimisation to ensure that treatments work better and safer for every individual,” Wu said.

The effectiveness of a drug varies from person to person, influenced by age, genetic makeup, diet and other factors.

Recently, researchers discovered that microbes in the gut can also metabolise orally administered drugs. It breaks down the compounds into different chemical structures which then alters the drugs' efficacy.

To learn more about which gut bacteria metabolises which drugs, the team built a synthetic microbial community composed of 30 common bacterial strains found in the human gut.

In the lab study, they added each of the 127 GPCR-targeting drugs individually to tubes containing the bacteria.

The experiment showed that the bacterial mix metabolised 30 of the 127 tested drugs, 12 of which were heavily metabolised. This meant that concentrations of the original drug were greatly depleted because they were transformed into other compounds.

Overall, the findings, published in the journal Nature Chemistry, suggest that “specific gut bacteria could make GPCR-targeting drugs less effective by transforming them into other compounds,” the team said. The team urged for more research to understand the potential impact in people and that patients shouldn’t stop taking or, change their medication without consulting their provider.