Study: anti-depressants could lead to antibiotic-resistant bacteria

Bacteria can learn to defeat antibiotics in lots of different ways. And a major reason why antibiotic resistance is so concerning is that many of their tricks can disable a whole class of antibiotics at the same time. Fluoxetine might affect us differently than antibiotics, but it seems to kill bacteria in a similar way to the antibiotics tested in the study, making cross-resistance more likely. When Guo and his team studied the genetics of E. coli exposed to fluoxetine, they found mutations already known to help bacteria resist some antibiotics. These mutations allow the bacteria to essentially spit out a drug before it kills them.