It wasn’t but yesterday that we learned about how mixing coffee with protein powder can become a petri dish for harmful bacteria. And then today we have a new study on how coffee affects things like antibiotics. The answer? Even more bacteria.
As reported by Science Alert, the new study was published recently in the journal PLOS Biology by a team of researchers from the University of Tübingen in Germany. For it, they examined how 94 different chemical substances impacted the bacteria e. coli, specifically “how they altered the systems that control what gets into and out of the bacterial cells.” One of the substances was caffeine.
Of all the substances tested, about a third were found to affect what goes in and out of the bacteria cell. But caffeine stood out as uniquely impactful. The researchers noted that caffeine led to e. coli absorbing lower levels of antibiotics, ciprofloxacin in particular, which is used to kill harmful bacteria in the body.
“Caffeine triggers a cascade of events starting with the gene regulator Rob and culminating in the change of several transport proteins in E. coli, which in turn leads to a reduced uptake of antibiotics such as ciprofloxacin,” states Ana Rita Brochado, one of the study’s authors.
But before you put down the coffee, these findings have thus far only been found in lab settings; there have yet to be human trials to determine if the impact holds. Nor is there any indication on how much coffee would need to be consumed to stymie antibiotic efficacy, or how long after taking them one can drink coffee again.
Nonetheless it’s something to consider when taking antibiotics. You want your anaerobic fermented coffees to have bacteria, not your tummy.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
