Think Thrice Before Taking Antibiotics

Researchers in the journal Gut have discovered that antibiotics have an impact on the microorganisms that live in our gut that's more broad and complex than previously known.
The findings help to better explain some of the damage these medications can do, and set the stage for new ways to study and offset those impacts.

Antibiotic use, and especially overuse, can have unwanted effects on everything from the immune system to glucose metabolism, food absorption, obesity, stress and behavior. The issues are rising in importance, since 40 percent of all adults and 70 percent of all children take one or more antibiotics every year, not to mention their use in billions of food animals.

The research also found that antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant microbes caused significant changes in mitochondrial function, which plays a major role in cell signaling, growth and energy production, and for good health they need to function properly.

This research also developed a new bioinformatics approach named "transkingdom network interrogation" to studying microbiota, which could help further speed the study of any alterations of host microbiota interactions and antibiotic impact. This could aid the search for new probiotics to help offset antibiotic effects, and conceivably lead to systems that would diagnose a person's microbiome, identify deficiencies and then address them in a precise and individual way.

Bonnie: Here's the most encouraging thing they said: healthy microbiota may also be another way to address growing problems with antibiotic resistance. Instead of trying to kill the "bad" bacteria causing an illness, a healthy and functioning microbiota may be able to outcompete the unwanted microbes and improve immune function!