Most mucosal surfaces of the human body contain an extremely complex ecosystem of microbial organisms. These resident microbes exist in a delicate balance with each other and the human host that is dictated by the specific local environmental factors of each host body site. In health, the many different species that make up the microbiota exist in homeostasis with the host immune system. A dysbiosis of the microbiota shifts the community, which may lead to disease.
Early-life antibiotic treatment may accelerate type 1 diabetes onset in non-obese diabetic mice
26 Oct 2016by Andreu Prados
A recent study, led by Dr. Martin J. Blaser from the Departments of Medicine and Microbiology at New York University Langone Medical Centre in New York (USA), has found that early-life antibiotic exposure in non-obese diabetic mice may accelerate T1D development.
Gut microbiota manipulation by antibiotics may not affect metabolism of obese individuals in the short term
30 Sep 2016by Andreu Prados
A recent randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial, led by Dr. Ellen Blaak from the Department of Human Biology at Maastricht University Medical Centre in Maastricht (The Netherlands), has found that a 7-day antibiotic treatment does not affect host metabolism in obese humans in the short term, despite profound changes in gut microbial diversity and composition.
A recent study, led by Dr. Menghui Zhang from the State Key Laboratory of Microbial Metabolism at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China), has shown that gut resistome of obese children is reduced after a dietary intervention.
Inappropriate use of antibiotics promotes the emergence of multidrug-resistant pathogens, such as Vancomycin-resistant Enterococci (VRE), Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), and Multidrug-resistant (MDR) Enterobacteriaceae, which justifies the search for alternative clinical approaches.
For Dr. Vanni Bucci, assistant professor of computational biology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, new treatments are not the only way to make progress in medicine.
After intestinal anastomosis -- resection and reconnection of intestinal segments -- the intestine sometimes fails to heal. Leakage, peritonitis, and sepsis can result: in other words, anastomotic leak. The underlying cause of this complication is unknown, but evidence is growing that intestinal microbes play a role.
An article published in Science Advances studied the microbiome of Yanomami subjects in the Amazon with no previous record of contact with non-Yanomami - the most isolated community ever explored in the microbiome literature.
Stein and colleagues describe in their study, published in PLOS computational biology, how time series can help to study dynamics of the microbiota. Moreover, unlike usual cross sectional studies which lack a mechanistic understanding of the ecosystem's structure and its
A Nature Medicine paper by Hitesh S Deshmukh and colleagues from the Division of Neonatology, Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, Pennsilvania, USA reports an important aspect to the use of antibiotics in the integrity of the immune system in the newborn.
