Antibiotic damage to the gut
Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2011 10:35 pm
The March 2011 issue of Discover magazine has a piece on microbes in the human gut. Thought you might find an extract interesting. Or amusing. Or horrifying.
"Heavy use of antibiotics can lead to antibiotic resistance but researchers now speculate that antibiotics can also upset the balance of the microbial community, allowing disease to take over rather than fighting it.
[We could have told them that!]
... "Last year, Stanford microbiologist David Relman published a study that illustrated the potentially devastating impact of antibiotics on the microbiome [gut flora]. He gave three healthy adults a five-day course of the antibiotic Cipro, then another course six months later, and monitored the state of the microbiome after each treatment. The gut flora of all three subjects gradually recovered from the impact of the antibiotic treatment but never returned to their original state -- they have different compositions and were less diverse. [My emphasis.] 'We don't know if these differences matter to health,' Relman says. 'But in general you'd be concerned about a change.' He had chosen Cipro because it has limited effectiveness against most species of bacteria in the gut, but it still affected one-third to one-half of the microbial flora in the subjects. [My emphasis.] 'Knocking out one organism could have a ripple effect on the lives of others,' Relman says."
Useful info to pass on to patients who insist on antibiotics for colds -- and to the doctors who cravenly prescribe them.
Peace,
Dale
"Heavy use of antibiotics can lead to antibiotic resistance but researchers now speculate that antibiotics can also upset the balance of the microbial community, allowing disease to take over rather than fighting it.
[We could have told them that!]
... "Last year, Stanford microbiologist David Relman published a study that illustrated the potentially devastating impact of antibiotics on the microbiome [gut flora]. He gave three healthy adults a five-day course of the antibiotic Cipro, then another course six months later, and monitored the state of the microbiome after each treatment. The gut flora of all three subjects gradually recovered from the impact of the antibiotic treatment but never returned to their original state -- they have different compositions and were less diverse. [My emphasis.] 'We don't know if these differences matter to health,' Relman says. 'But in general you'd be concerned about a change.' He had chosen Cipro because it has limited effectiveness against most species of bacteria in the gut, but it still affected one-third to one-half of the microbial flora in the subjects. [My emphasis.] 'Knocking out one organism could have a ripple effect on the lives of others,' Relman says."
Useful info to pass on to patients who insist on antibiotics for colds -- and to the doctors who cravenly prescribe them.
Peace,
Dale