\r\n \r\n This is why it is so important for us to protect and aid in propagation of our symbiotic bacteria (probiotics). It is the absolute greatest ally to our immune system.
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\nHumans carry several pounds of microbes in our gastro-intestinal tracts. Recent research suggests that this microbial ecosystem plays a variety of critical roles in our health. Now, working in a mouse model, researchers from Canada describe many of the interactions between the intestinal microbiota and host, and show that antibiotics profoundly disrupt intestinal homeostasis. The research is published in the April 2011 issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.
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\n "Intestinal microbes help us digest our food, provide us with vitamins that we cannot make on our own, and protect us from microbes that make us sick, amongst other things," says L Caetano M. Antunes of the University of British Columbia, a researcher on the study. In this study, the investigators used powerful mass spectrometry techniques to detect, identify, and quantify more than two thousand molecules which they extracted from mouse feces. They then administered antibiotics to the mice, to kill off most of their gut microbiota, and analyzed the feces anew.
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\n The second round of mass spectroscopy revealed a very different metabolic landscape. The levels of 87 percent of the molecules detected had been shifted up or down by factors ranging from 2-fold to 10,000-fold.
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\n The most profoundly altered pathways involved steroid hormones, eicosanoid hormones, sugar, fatty acid, and bile acid. "These hormones have very important functions in our health," says Antunes. "They control our immune system, reproductive functions, mineral balance, sugar metabolism, and many other important aspects of human metabolism."
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\n The findings have two important implications, says Antunes. "First, our work shows that the unnecessary use of antibiotics has deleterious effects on human health that were previously unappreciated. Also, the fact that our gut microbes control these important molecules raises the possibility that manipulating these microbes could be used to modulate diseases that have hormonal or metabolic origins (such as inmmunodeficiency, depression, diabetes and others). However, further studies will be required to understand exactly how our microbial partners function to modulate human physiology, and to devise ways of using this information to improve human health."
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\n (L.C.M. Antunes, J. Han, R.B.R. Ferreira, P. Lolic, C.H. Borchers, and B.B. Finlay, 2011. Effect of antibiotic treatment on the intestinal metabolome. Antim. Agents Chemother. 55:1494-1503.)
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\nThe adult human gut is an ecosystem containing several pounds of bacteria, including hundreds of species and more than 100 trillion (100,000,000,000,000) individuals. A healthy microbial ecosystem protects the host against Clostridium difficile, which frequently colonizes the gut after its ecological balance has been disrupted by broad spectrum antibiotics, says Anne Collignon, of the University Paris Sud, Chatenay-Malabry, France.
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\n "To reconstitute the ecological balance of the microbiota, and with that, the "barrier" effect, seems a very efficient way to combat C. difficile infections," says Collignon. "Our results suggest that Bifidobacterium species, which are used as probiotics, can participate in that barrier effect against C. difficile. But proof is necessary, for example, in gnotoxenic animal models (germ-free animals challenged with specific bacteria)." But she notes that another team of investigators has shown similar results in elderly people. "It is well known that following use of broad-spectrum antibiotics, the gram positive species decrease dramatically, and the bacteroides increase," she says. "Our study gives some clues to the microbiota composition allowing C. difficile colonization," she concludes in the paper.
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\n(C. Rousseau, F. Levenez, C. Fouqueray, J. Dore, A. Collignon, and P. Lepage, 2011. Clostridium difficile colonization in early infancy is accompanied by changes in intestinal microbiota composition. J. Clin. Microbiol. 49:858-865.)\r\n

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\n- Jim
\nLife is just one damned thing after another - Elbert Hubbard
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