Stories tagged antibiotics
Farm animals often carry germs that can get into our food supply. And pumping the animals full of antibiotics can cause other problems, such as breeding super bugs that are immune to the drugs. But researchers in South Carolina are taking a new approach. They are adding nanoparticles to chicken feed. The particles imitate chicken cells and attract the germs. The germs get stuck to the particles, and then get expelled harmlessly the next time the chicken poops.
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Escherichia coli
Courtesy National Institutes of Health
Gut buddies
Bacteria are everywhere. Human intestines are loaded with bacteria (more than a trillion of them). Research findings are showing that humans have a symbiotic relationship with their intestinal flora. Our health depends upon certain bacteria in our gut.
Good bacteria help us digest our food, repress the growth of yeast and other harmful microbes, promote growth of cells lining the intestines, trains the early immune system in fighting harmful bacteria yet leaving the helpful species alone. Bacteria are also implicated in preventing allergies, an overreaction of the immune system to non-harmful antigens.
Study ties gut bacteria to good health
In a recent paper, Dennis Kasper at Harvard Medical School proposed
"that molecules of the bacterial microbiota can mediate the critical balance between health and disease" Nature: 29 May, 2008; A microbial symbiosis factor prevents intestinal inflammatory disease.
Colitis in mice due to lack of good gut bacteria
Bacteroides fragilis is a common bacterium found in the human gut that produces a molecule called Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA). Mouse studies suggest that PSA can influence the development of immune cells called T cells. Experiments in mice showed that PSA inhibited the production of chemicals by intestinal immune cells that usually trigger inflammation in response to infection with H. hepaticus. Read more about the study in New Scientist
What happens when broad spectrum antibiotics kill off your good gut bacteria?
I would like to challenge readers to answer this question using our comments feature, and to also suggest what you need to do to regain your "gut buddies".
Have you ever wondered what antibiotic resistance really means? And who is resistant to those drugs? For a very good explanation read the blog entry Drug Resistance, Explained in the New York Times. I enjoyed the History of Medicine at the end too.
Did you find this explanation helpful? Did you learn anything that surprised you?
Some microbes are resistant to antibiotics. Researchers in England have developed a way to change the molecular structure of antibiotics to make them more effective against these “superbugs.”
A compound, platensimycin, found in soil microbes may be the source of a powerful new antibiotic. In the lab, it wiped out strains of Staphylococcus aureus and Enterococcus that were resistant to our most powerful current drugs. The drug won't be ready for human use for years, but if it passes all safety and efficacy tests, it will be the third new antibiotic to reach patients in the last 40 years. And the strongest.
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