It is not safe to mix some types of antibiotics, such as tetracyclines and nitroimidazoles, with alcohol. This can cause dangerous side effects or make them less effective at removing bacteria. Alcohol can have many negative effects on your health, including on liver function, digestion and heart health. Frequent alcohol use can also weaken your immune system, making it easier to pick up contagious illnesses. Despite these limitations, the findings of this review bring into question many of the conventionally accepted alcohol-antimicrobial interactions.

Metronidazole, tinidazole, cefoperazone, cefotetan, and ketoconazole

Both of these beta-lactams have the ability to upregulate glutamate transporter-1 and phosphorylated-AKT levels, which are responsible for mediating the brain reward center for alcohol intake (12). Keep in mind that some cold medicines and mouthwashes also have alcohol. Antibiotics and alcohol can cause some of the same side effects.

What Should I Avoid Eating and Drinking With Levaquin?

Mixing antibiotics and alcohol can make these side effects worse. If you choose to drink alcohol while taking an antibiotic, check on the safety with your doctor or pharmacist first. Should you experience any serious side effects or reactions listed or not listed, seek immediate medical attention. In addition, alcohol can worsen the side-effects that Levaquin causes. This can include an excessive amount of light-headedness and giddiness. Levofloxacin may cause some people to become dizzy, lightheaded, drowsy, or less alert than they are normally.

Historical studies have can a drug dog smell nicotine suggested that alcohol use with nitrofurantoin resulted in a disulfiram-like reaction (40–42). Likewise, a study found that alcohol did not cause a disulfiram-like reaction with nitrofurantoin in volunteers (44). Minocycline may attenuate alcohol-mediated toxicity in pregnant mice. Minocycline treatment in the third trimester protected against alcohol-induced neurotoxicity in the developing brain (38).

1. Alcohol appears to lead to slowed “gastric emptying” when combined with erythromycin ethylsuccinate.
2. If you’re healthy, moderate alcohol use shouldn’t affect how well an antibiotic works, notes Dr. Clayton.
3. Although data are not optimal, it is reasonable to advise avoidance of alcohol consumption in patients taking isoniazid.
4. To our knowledge, there are no data available on the PK/PD or efficacy of oxazolidinone.

Doxycycline.

It’s OK to consume alcohol low in tyramine with this class of drugs. Tyramine is a naturally occurring trace compound from the amino acid tyrosine. High-tyramine alcohols include home-brewed beer, beer on tap, Korean beer, and vermouth. Most bottled beers are lower in tyramine, but it’s always best to ask a healthcare provider if it’s safe to consume alcohol on these antibiotics. These drugs are often reserved for illnesses like community-acquired pneumonia and severe skin and bacterial infections after other antibiotics have not worked. Linezolid is a weak, nonspecific inhibitor of monoamine oxidase (MAO) enzymes (81).

If these were some of the same enzymes used to metabolize (process) your antibiotic, you might not get as high a dose as you need to fight the infection. Here, we’ll discuss the safety of mixing alcohol and antibiotics. We’ll also explain what effects alcohol can have on your body’s ability to fight infection. Incidental and responsible alcohol consumption provides little risk for nonreactive antibiotics. Heavy drinking comes with its own risks, which may be exacerbated by the medicine. The combination will cause effects like flushed skin, stomach cramps, nausea, and vomiting.

In a randomized crossover trial, the effects of whiskey and red wine on the PK of doxycycline for six students was studied (35). Whiskey did not significantly modify the absorption of 200 mg of oral doxycycline. Acute intake of alcoholic beverages does not interfere with the PK of doxycycline to an extent that would affect its therapeutic levels. Mixing alcohol and some antibiotics may cause side effects like liver problems or a “disulfiram-like reaction”.

More recent studies show how alcohol specifically weakens the immune system as it’s being metabolized. If your body is trying to fight an infection, drinking large amounts of alcohol can hamper the effectiveness of the immune response to infection. Responsible drinking (2-3 drinks or less per day) reduces the impact on the immune system and should not interfere with most antibiotics. While the impact may be smaller or even negligible, many health professionals advise against drinking while fighting an infection.

This means that the antibiotic use may be insufficient to treat infections making the infection worse. A surveillance study of 13,838 patients on isoniazid by 21 health departments found that consuming at least one drink daily appeared to increase the risk of developing hepatitis (105). Probable isoniazid-induced hepatitis was twice as common in alcoholics than in nondrinkers and four times more likely if they consumed alcohol daily (105).

Cycloserine may decrease alcohol craving, and the package inset warns of seizures with concomitant alcohol use, but data to support this warning were not identified. To our knowledge, there are no data available on the efficacy of cycloserine. To our knowledge, there are no data available on the PK/PD or efficacy of ethionamide. Ethionamide is used in the treatment of TB that is resistant to first-line agents (113).