Milestone 4:

Peppercorn and Goldman demonstrated that the anti-inflammatory drug, salicylazosulfapyridine, could be degraded in conventional rats and when cultured with human gut bacteria, but not in germ-free rats, indicating a role for the gut microbiota in drug transformations. An increasing number of studies have confirmed the role of the microbiota, not limited to the gut, in drug metabolism and highlighted the implications for drug inactivation, efficacy and toxicity.