Holistic solution to an old "mystery": the global role of antibiotic consumption patterns in the spread of certain non-contagious diseases in EU countries

Abstract

The discovery and extensive utilization of antibiotics are highly contributed to the considerable lengthening life expectancy of human beings. Antibiotics, mixed with animal fodder, produced considerable growth promoting effect and hence, extended the indications of antibiotics at a much higher level. The indiscriminate use of antibiotics quickly resulted in the emergence of poly-resistant pathogens and the extensive antibiotic pollution of the environment, particularly of the surface water and rivers trough human and animal excreta. Along with extensive and ever increasing antibiotic consumption/pollution, the pandemic-like spreading of certain non-contagious diseases like obesity, diabetes (Type 1-2 T1DM, T2DM), Alzheimer disease (AD), Parkinson disease, multiple sclerosis (MS) etc. started unfolding, which was called as a slow moving disaster, without having any appropriate explanation of the phenomenon. The parallel appearance of those “pandemics”, which appeared simultaneously with the extensive antibiotic consumption, might indicate some kind of association. As far as several publications have reported the crucial role of altered gut flora in the development of metabolic disorders (diabetes, obesity) and neurodegenerative diseases alike (PD, AD, MS), it might be suspected that antibiotics, acting through the modification of microbiome, could influence the morbidity (prevalence) of those, non-infectious diseases. This concept, described below, might serve as a unified explanation, not excluding other, contributing causative factors, for the phenomenon, outlined above.