Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jul 7, 2017; 23(25): 4491-4499
Published online Jul 7, 2017. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v23.i25.4491
Eubiotic properties of rifaximin: Disruption of the traditional concepts in gut microbiota modulation
Francesca Romana Ponziani, Maria Assunta Zocco, Francesca D’Aversa, Maurizio Pompili, Antonio Gasbarrini
Francesca Romana Ponziani, Maria Assunta Zocco, Francesca D’Aversa, Maurizio Pompili, Antonio Gasbarrini, Internal Medicine, Gastroenterology and Hepatology Division, Agostino Gemelli Hospital, 00168 Rome, Italy
Author contributions: Ponziani FR, Zocco MA and D’Aversa F performed literature research, wrote the paper and approved the final version of the manuscript; Pompili M and Gasbarrini A approved the final version of the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Francesca Romana Ponziani, MD, Internal Medicine, Gastroenterology and Hepatology Division, Agostino Gemelli Hospital, largo Agostino Gemelli 8, 00168 Rome, Italy. francesca.ponziani@yahoo.it
Telephone: +39-347-1227242 Fax: +39-063-0156265
Received: February 25, 2017
Peer-review started: February 27, 2017
First decision: April 7, 2017
Revised: April 14, 2017
Accepted: May 19, 2017
Article in press: May 19, 2017
Published online: July 7, 2017
Core Tip

Core tip: The traditional use of antibiotics in the clinical practice is to antagonize local or systemic infections. However, antibiotics induce several alterations of the gut microbiota, including the reduction of beneficial bacteria as well as of microbial diversity. Rifaximin is a non-absorbable antibiotic with broad-spectrum activity and non-traditional antimicrobial effects. Rifaximin has the potential to induce a positive modulation of the gut microbiota, favoring the growth of bacteria beneficial to the host without altering its overall composition. Therefore, rifaximin can be defined not only as an antibiotic but also as an “eubiotic”, namely a positive modulator of the gut ecosystem.