LOS ANGELES: We must stop treating antibiotics ‘like sweets’, a government-commissioned report warned last week.
The report, by economist Lord Jim O’Neill, said misuse of the drugs is ‘teaching’ superbugs to resist even powerful antibiotics.
Such bugs as Clostridium difficile are estimated to account for 700,000 deaths worldwide each year. But this could grow to ten million lives a year by 2050 if we don’t stop prescribing antibiotics unnecessarily, warned Lord O’Neill.
But could antibiotics also be a major cause of spiralling epidemics of depression and dementia, as well as other mental disorders such as delirium and anxiety?
Brain disease might seem wholly unrelated to taking bacteria-killing drugs. But the key to the problem lies in our stomachs. Research shows that the bacteria in our gut manufacture a variety of chemicals that affect the way our brains function.
Researchers at Tel Aviv University studied the health records of more than one million Britons from 1995 to 2013 and found that a single course of antibiotics boosts the risk of depression by around a quarter…