This clinical review provides a summary of information on antibiotic-food interactions. The effects of medications vary from person to person due to multiple interactions. These include drug-drug interactions and drug-food interactions, which are influenced by everything an individual consumes. While drug-drug interactions are relatively well studied and understood by healthcare professionals such as doctors, nurses, and pharmacists, drugfood interactions are often overlooked, even by medical professionals.
As a result, medications' effects may become stronger, weaker, or completely absent, and in some cases, this may lead to toxicity. Therefore, this review aims to enhance awareness of drug-food interactions among healthcare professionals and the general public to improve treatment outcomes. Food-drug interactions are more noteworthy compared to other interactions. This is because dietary habits are often not recorded in a patient’s medical history and are not always included in consultations with healthcare professionals. However, the risk of adverse effects is the same for both food and medication.
Particularly, solid dosage forms such as tablets, capsules, and pills should be taken with water. If taken with other beverages— such as milk, alcohol, coffee, or fruit juices— they can affect the drug's pharmacokinetics (absorption, metabolism, distribution, and excretion), potentially increasing side effects or suppressing the drug’s effectiveness. Spoiled food, food that has not been stored in a refrigerator, or aged, pickled, fermented, or smoked foods may contain tyramine. Therefore, special caution should be taken to avoid consuming these foods during medication treatment. Tyramine is also found in foods like bananas, avocados, raisins, raspberries, and soy sauce.
When Linezolid is taken with foods high in tyramine, it can cause a sudden and dangerous increase in blood pressure. Thus, it is important to check food labels and ingredients carefully.