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Antibiotics and Opdivo
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Antibiotics and Opdivo

› Forums › General Melanoma Community › Antibiotics and Opdivo

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    • July 13, 2019 at 8:05 pm
    Baby_Girl
    Participant
      From what I have gathered it would be ideal not to be on antibiotics before or during immunotherapy because the antibiotics also kills the good bacteria that is your gut. And there is research and studies that say the gut plays a role in your response to immunotherapy. I have not taken antibiotics in YEARS. Then of course I get a toothache and need a root canal and had to start antibiotics. I have had 4 treatments of Opdivo so far. My oncologist approved the antibiotics and cleared me for the root canal.
      So my question is- Have the antibiotics hurt my chances of responding to the immunotherapy?
      I tried to hold off on taking the antibiotics but the tooth pain was too much. I am stage 3 and taking Opdivo as adjuvant therapy.
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        • July 13, 2019 at 8:24 pm
        Lucygoose
        Participant
          From what I understand the research indicates a correlation between gut biome diversity and response to immunotherapy. There is no cause and effect reason as far as I know. The correlation could be entirely secondary to another trait. There is no research I am aware of that shows increasing or decreasing the diversity by artificial means has an impact on immunotherapy outcome. I would do what would support a diverse gut biome.

          This would mean fermented foods, fiber and maybe cultured foods like yogurt.

            • July 14, 2019 at 2:52 am
            Baby_Girl
            Participant
              Thank you for your response. I’m eating yogurt everyday and trying to incorporate kefir and kombucha to also help my gut biome.
            • July 13, 2019 at 9:38 pm
            ed williams
            Participant
              Hi Baby-girl, there is some data but nothing specific to your situation of being stage 3 and also the information is retrospective ( looking back at old patients for trends). Here are a couple of links but again remember that this is retrospective data and a small sample size. Also, I was on antibiotics for a lung infection in December 2013 before starting nivo back in 2014 and nivo has worked great in my case My thinking is without a trial that has antibiotic as part of the design which would probably never be done, it will be hard to make a strong connection or extra data from many more retrospective studies following many more patients. Best Wishes!!!Ed https://abstracts.asco.org/239/AbstView_239_248079.html https://ascopubs.org/doi/abs/10.1200/JCO.2018.36.15_suppl.3010
                • July 14, 2019 at 2:55 am
                Baby_Girl
                Participant
                  Thank you Ed! I appreciate the articles and it’s helpful to know that you’ve had a good response on immunotherapy even after having antibiotics.
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