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Antibiotics are dangerous to the brain
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
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Antibiotics are the most widely used drugs in the modern world, so scientists study their effects on the human body. One of the latest studies found that these drugs have a negative effect on brain cells.
Experts admit that the effect of antibacterial drugs on the body is one of the most important problems today. To increase the effectiveness of antibiotics, manufacturers add various substances to their composition, which are not always useful for the human body. Usually, antibiotic treatment affects the digestive system, but it has been established that other organs and systems can also suffer from treatment with these drugs.
A team of specialists observed how antibiotic treatment affects the body - as it turned out, the drugs quickly suppress the source of infection, but also cause some side effects, in particular, damage to nerve cells and disruption of the nervous system.
Based on this discovery, experts recommend taking antibiotics only when necessary, not taking these drugs on your own, and scientists advise doctors to prescribe more gentle drugs to their patients.
In other studies, scientists have found that antiretroviral drugs also have a negative effect on the brain. Such drugs contain a substance that promotes the formation of beta-amyloid protein, which provokes the development of Alzheimer's disease. In experiments on animals, American specialists have found that protease inhibitors included in antiretroviral drugs have a detrimental effect on brain cells and, in their opinion, this work should help find new methods for treating HIV infection.
It is known that systematic use of antibiotics has a negative impact on overall health. But in recent studies, scientists have found that antibiotics are especially dangerous for children under 2 years of age. Such conclusions were made by Dutch specialists who analyzed more than 20 studies that have been conducted since 1966. As a result, they came to the conclusion that infants and children under 2 years of age who took antibiotics had poorer health in the future and suffered from chronic diseases. For example, such children more often developed food allergies, dermatitis, hay fever (such data are indicated by the medical records of more than 70 thousand people, which scientists studied in the course of their work). According to scientists, up to 41% of people who took antibiotics at an early age suffered from various types of dermatitis and up to 56% hay fever.
Dutch scientists believe that doctors sometimes misdiagnose the type of acute respiratory viral infection, which leads to the prescription and administration of the wrong drugs. Also, most people often take antibiotics on their own, relying on the advice of friends, colleagues or pharmacists. But if taking antibiotics is temporary for an adult, then small children can suffer from it for the rest of their lives.
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