Medical Bulletin 12/September/2022

The use of broad-spectrum antibiotics in mice with malignant melanoma, an aggressive form of skin cancer, accelerated their metastatic bone growth, likely because the drugs depleted the mice's intestinal flora and weakened their immune response, according to a new study by researchers at Emory University in Atlanta.

The researchers hypothesized that using antibiotics to deplete the gut microbiome of mice would affect their intestinal immune cells and thus alter their immune response, leading to accelerated bone metastasis. They injected B16‐F10 melanoma cells into the hearts and bones of mice that had been treated with broad‐spectrum antibiotics. As predicted, the antibiotic injections accelerated bone metastatic growth in those mice, compared with control mice that had not received the shots.

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