Community post

Steven Sutcliffe (McGill University), Michael Shamash and colleagues published a new paper in Viruses showing how common medications lead to prophage induction in human gut bacteria. They tested anti-inflammatory, chemotherapy, mild analgesic, cardiac, and antibiotic drug classes, and found that bacteria were inhibited by most of these drugs, and prophages were induced in half of those cases. They even saw that induction was species-specific (inducing prophages in Clostridium beijerinckii, Bacteroides caccae, and Bacteroides eggerthii)!