Chronic Antibiotic Use Can Lead to Seizures, Says Study

March 27, 2023

Article published by The Hindu

Chronic antibiotic use may lead to seizure-related reactions in patients, a study conducted at the University of Calicut has found.

The results of the study were recently published in the peer-reviewed science journal Experimental Brain Research. The authors are Dhanusha Sivarajan and Binu Ramachandran. The study proposed a hypothesis to check whether antibiotic treatment can conclusively enhance anxiety-like behavior and how the seizure behavior gets modulated in zebrafish treated with the seizure-inducer drug pentylenetetrazol (PTZ).

Zebrafish were first treated with selected antibiotics, such as 25 mg/L Penicillin G (PG) and Ciprofloxacin (CPFX), for seven days. Thereafter, they were exposed to PTZ (7.5 mM) for 20 minutes. The resultant data indicated that PG and CPFX-treated fish exhibited anxiety-like or stressed behavioral traits during the novel tank test, which is a method to measure anxiety-like behavior in adult Zebrafish. They were found to promote hyperactivity too.

However, the onset of PTZ-induced seizure-like behavior was quite early in them. The intensity of the seizures and their frequency were higher too. The study proved that PG and CPFX acted as potential seizure modulators. Mr. Ramachandran told The Hindu on Tuesday that Zebrafish was a well-established and still expanding model organism in many fields which have 70% to 80% genetic similarity with humans.