Missing Microbes and Increased Antibiotic Resistance

Missing Microbes and Increased Antibiotic Resistance

Dr. Martin Blaser’s book Missing Microbes details his observations and hypotheses on how overuse and misuse of antibiotics may be the source of modern non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes, asthma, and obesity. The maps of the U.S. colored with obesity and antibiotic prescriptions fit extremely well – and centered on my Southern homeland. Could it be that the obesity epidemic, diabetes, allergies, asthma, and other non-communicable diseases that are centered over the American South are not due to our preference for all things fried or sopped in butter and washed down with a swig of sweet tea? It’s not just due to sitting in front of screens too much. Certainly poor diet and little exercise don’t help. But could an over-use of antibiotics also be to blame?  That was the hypothesis. Obesity Caused by Over Use of Antibiotics? Dr. Martin Blaser from NYU’s experimental research on mice demonstrated drastic changes in the different types of gut bacteria present before and after antibiotic use. More strikingly, when the antibiotic use was discontinued and the bacterial populations rebounded, the bacterial types that did come back were different metabolically. Antibiotics drastically effected the gut microbiome. Does antibiotic somehow set us on a path

New Year’s Resolutions for Your Microbiome

New Year’s Resolutions for Your Microbiome

Get dirty, sleep, eat a diversity of real food, avoid antibiotics The beginning of a new year is always a time for reflection and resolutions for lifestyle changes and New Year’s resolutions! I’d suggest if you want to improve your life and health, start with the very numerous, yet invisible portion of yourself – your microbiome.  The digestive system microbiome is best understood of all the human microbiomes. The importance of these invisible organisms for human health is increasingly apparent. However, scientists are still unraveling what makes up a “healthy” and “unhealthy” gut microbiome. It’s too early in the science to offer exact prescriptives, such as specific probiotics to take at certain doses or how many grams of fiber to incorporate in your diet. However, recent observational and even experimental research, points to general suggestions to improve gut microbiome health. Interestingly many of these suggestions often align with age-old healthy habits, but some may seem initially counterintuitive. 

Entering the Natural Antibiotic Arms Race

Entering the Natural Antibiotic Arms Race

Antibiotics are naturally made by fungi and bacteria to compete for space and nutrients. Antibiotic resistance is a natural defense. Antibiotic resistance has become an issue because we have misused antibiotics and thus increased the exposure of bacteria to antibiotics.  Medical use of antibiotics to kill pathogens is similar to being shot with your own stolen gun. Although we synthesize and purify antibiotics for human use, antibiotics originate in microbes. Life as a microbe is tough. Conditions in the soil are ever changing. Food and water are scarce. Microbes only move and reproduce if enough water and food are present. The rotting body of a housefly may seem trivial to humans. For microbes, it’s the biggest buffet in Vegas. It’s every microbe for herself and those with any trick up their pili or thallus to feed and divide faster to fill up the habitat space are the winners. Enter toxins that kill bacteria – antibiotics – literally meaning “against” “life”. Bacteria or fungi make and release these toxic substances into the environment to kill their competitors. The microbes making the toxins often protect themselves by targeting cell structures that they don’t have, but their competitors do. Similar to how Superman

The Vaginal Microbiome: “Healthy” Differs with Ethnicity

The Vaginal Microbiome: “Healthy” Differs with Ethnicity

What is a “normal and healthy” microbiome seems to differ among individuals and ethnic groups.  One of the goals with the Human Microbiome Project (HMP) was to characterize the healthy microbiome of different human body sites. The idea being that microbiome science needed to have a baseline of “normal and healthy” to compare to “dysbiotic and ill”. The ~200 individuals sampled for the HMP provided a surprising insight – there is no one healthy microbiome for a given site. Just as there are healthy people of a range of heights from 4’8” to 7’8”, so are there a range of healthy microbiome communities. However, the one body site thought to have a distinct microbiome across all women was the vaginal microbiome.

Catastrophic disturbance of the microbiome

Catastrophic disturbance of the microbiome

An evolutionarily more recent and much more damaging disruption of our microbiome emerged in the mid 1929’s when Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin [1] and antibiotics began to be used for human medicine. Antibiotics were and remain a miracle drug. Fewer people die now from secondary infections as complications from surgery or due to opportunistic bacterial pathogens. However, there is a cost for this miracle – disturbance of the microbiome. The antibiotics most frequently used are broad-spectrum, which are indiscriminate killers of all things bacterial.  Which one of these is not like the other? Antibiotics take advantage of basic differences between humans (and other eukaryotes) and bacteria. Both eukaryotes and bacteria use proteins called ribosomes to make the mRNA for protein synthesis that they need for feeding, reproduction, and other basic, essential functions. However, the ribosomes are very different between eukaryotes and bacteria. So much so that antibiotics that target bacterial ribosomes can’t and don’t recognize the ribosomes of eukaryotes. So humans still have proteins made while the bacterial machinery is shut down. Aminoglycosides like streptomycin and gentamicin are examples of these antibiotics inhibiting protein synthesis. Another antibiotic target is the bacterial cell wall. Peptidoglycans, a special set of sugars (carbohydrates),