ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Antimicrobials, Resistance and Chemotherapy
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1658173
Cadmium's Silent Sabotage: Unveiling Its Impact on Antibiotic Efficacy
Provisionally accepted
- Wuxi People’s Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing Medical University, Wuxi, China
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Despite advancements in non-antibiotic therapies, antibiotics continue to be the cornerstone of bacterial infection management. However, the overuse of antibiotics has led to an increase in clinical failures, a situation worsened by the phenomenon of bacterial antibiotic tolerance, which remains less understood than genetic resistance. Environmental stressors, including heavy metals like cadmium, have been associated with heightened susceptibility to infections, yet their influence on antibiotic efficacy has not been thoroughly investigated. In this study, we demonstrate that chronic exposure to cadmium diminishes the effectiveness of antibiotics in systemic infections, as evidenced by a mouse model. From a mechanistic perspective, alterations in the composition of endogenous metabolites due to changes in gut microbiota, notably the diminished production of DL-mevalonolactone, impede bacterial clearance. This is because DL-mevalonolactone plays a crucial role in facilitating the eradication of antibiotic-tolerant bacteria by activating their metabolic processes. Our findings underscore the detrimental impact of cadmium on antibiotic treatment, emphasizing the health risks associated with cadmium exposure.
Keywords: antibiotic tolerance 1, cadmium accumulation 2, bacterial metabolism 3, gut microbiota 4, Multi-omics Analysis 5
Received: 02 Jul 2025; Accepted: 21 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Tao, Zhou, Yu, Wu and Bian. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xuan Tao, Wuxi People’s Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing Medical University, Wuxi, China
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