**4.1 Antibiotics**

Antibiotics have become very popular for elimination of pathogenic bacteria. However, antibiotics are also harmful to the local population of beneficial GM. Hence excess use of antibiotics must be prevented for healthy maintenance of GM. Bacterio-therapeutic use of antibiotics in farm animals has increased increase growth and food production, but has taken a toll of their metabolic pathways [115]. Excess of usage of antibiotics in early infancy show chronic effects on GM diversity, overweight in infants, obesity in adults. For example, excess of bacterio-therapy with vancomycin has increased the incidence of obesity in adults. Even, short-term treatment with vancomycin impeded peripheral insulin sensitivity and other related metabolic syndromes affecting GM (**Table 2**) [115]. Hence, even short-term treatment with oral antibiotics harness intense and chronic damage to GM diversity and function.
