microbial threat. A gut bacteria cocktail may one day be used to treat chronic diarrhea caused by this bacterium.
David Goulding Genome Research Limited
a tonic of gut microbes may be the secret recipe to treat a common hospital scourge. The researchers revealed the exact combination of microbes necessary to cure mice with a chronic infection with a bacterium that causes difficult to treat bloating, pain and diarrhea in people. A similar bacterial cocktail may one day be able to replace a controversial treatment involving the consumption of feces to restore the balance of microbes in the gut.
Clostridium difficile is a threat in hospitals and nursing homes, causing nearly 336,000 infections and 14,000 deaths annually in the United States. Antibiotics can temporarily drop the bacteria, but about 25% of infected people relapse, often several times, because the germ produces spores that hand sanitizers and hand washing do not kill. Antibiotics can also turn against because they kill normal microbial community in the gut, opening the way to C. difficile to resettle.
In desperation, some doctors have turned to an unpleasant Contact: successfully treat patients by inserting a tube into the stomach containing ground up, filtered faecal a person healthy subjects containing a dose of beneficial microbes. But this treatment is controversial and in some places illegal, because of the risk of introducing other pathogens.
In search of alternatives, microbiologist Trevor Lawley Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, U.K., and colleagues examined Clostridium infection in mice. Lawley and his colleagues first demonstrated that the spores of the germ can cause any infection recurrences after antibiotic treatment and fecal therapy cures the problem. They then cultured feces used to cure mice, the isolation of 18 types of bacteria. Finally, they began to mix and match, infecting mice with different combinations of bacteria. Among the various combinations tested, only one, a mixture of six very different types of bacteria, cured the mice, they report online today in PLoS Pathogens .
"It is an excellent paper, avant-garde," says Brendan Wren, a microbiologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who was not involved in the study of the mouse. It works now with Trawley to determine if they can find an appropriate bacterial cocktail that will heal humans. If they succeed, Wren said one day "single suppository of the bacteria could prevent C. difficile reinfection and avoid need antibiotics, which can make the problem worse "
* Correction, 05:20 pm.. patients Some doctors have successfully treated for C. difficult with ground up, the filtered fecal matter inserted into the stomach with a tube, not through an enema.
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