India, Oct. 18 -- Eating sweets while taking antibiotics may worsen the harm done by the drugs to the normal community of bacteria in the gut, a new study found.

The work centers on the intestinal microbiome, which harbors bacterial species that co-evolved with humans to live in the digestive tract, help digest food, and support the immune system. Antibiotics, among the most prescribed drugs globally, are known to eliminate helpful bacteria alongside harmful species, in some cases letting harmful ones dominate.

The microbiome is more capable of resisting the buildup of harmful pathogens when natural species diversity is in place, but antibiotics reduce diversity in ways that make the gut more vulnerable to disease, the study authors sai...