FDA Bans Antiseptics: One Small Step for Bacteria and Humankind

FDA Bans Antiseptics: One Small Step for Bacteria and Humankind

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned 19 antiseptic chemicals from over-the-counter soaps, hand and body washes. Citing concerns over long-term human safety and increased selection for antibiotic resistance, the FDA banned antiseptic chemicals on September 2, 2016. Antimicrobial washes also didn’t perform better than standard soap and water [1, 2]. Despite these findings and concerns, toothpaste, “First aid antiseptics”, antiseptic wipes, health care antiseptics, consumer antiseptic rubs, or antiseptics used by food industry CAN continue to use these 19 antiseptic chemicals [3-5]. Triclosan and triclocarban found in products including mouthwash, toothpaste, soaps, shoes, and toys, are two well-known antibiotics now banned from use in washes.

Microbial Media and Bacterial Biofilms: #SciComm Round-up

Microbial Media and Bacterial Biofilms: #SciComm Round-up

So many excellent new videos and articles written to a general audience are being produced so frequently. Here I’m rounding up my favorites from May. Bacterial Biofilms TED-Ed (Scott Chimileski and Roberto Kolter): “The microbial jungles all over the place (and you).” In nature, yourself included, bacteria live in cities of mucus they and sometimes other microbes. This video does an awesome job of talking about the importance of biofilms for bacterial survival. It is a little surprising that they didn’t mention antibiotic resistance or issues with biofilms on medical devices, but it was refreshing that it focused more on environmental bacteria instead of human issues with pathogens. Gut Microbiome FiveThirtyEight: “Gut Science” – includes articles on probiotics, gut science’s WIERD bias, constipation worries, and more. There’s even a video “What Your Poop Says About You” General Microbiome PhD Comics  and Elaine Hsiao’s video “The HIDDEN World of Microbiomes” gets a 2 pili up rating for producing an excellent, informative video. I love that this video includes environmental microbiomes as well as the human microbiome. Certainly, and perhaps coincidentally?, this video was produced in partnership with the Kavli Foundation and released a few weeks before the National Microbiome Initiative. If this is the

It’s All About the Breast Milk Sugars, Baby

It’s All About the Breast Milk Sugars, Baby

Helpful infant gut bacterium, Bifidobacterium infantis, uses special breast milk sugars to grow that other bacteria can’t use. Breast Milk Sugars Don’t Feed the Infant As parents we often try to limit sugar for our kids. However, with breast milk – the sugars are essential food for helpful bacteria that grow in an infant’s gut. Along with fats, water, antioxidants from mom’s diet, antibodies, and other compounds, breast milk has a diversity of complex carbohydrate sugars. Called human milk oligosaccharides (HMO), these chains of carbohydrates bonded together are difficult to break apart. Humans do not make the enzymes that can break these breast milk sugar bonds [1, 2]. Our helpful gut bacteria do [3-6]. Infants and most gut bacteria don’t have the enzymes in their guts to digest the sugars that dominate human breast milk. The beneficial bacterium, Bifidobacterium infantis, uses enzyme Endo BI-1 for breaking sugars to use for food. This may explain why B. infantis dominates the gut of breast fed babies. HMO sugars are extremely different from their refined and over-processed cousins that we use to sweeten our drinks and solid foods. Refined and processed sugars are primarily simple carbohydrates made of a few carbon molecules bound together

Book Review: The Invisible War

Book Review: The Invisible War

The graphic novel “The Invisible War: A Tale on Two Scales” tells stories of the macroscopic (nurses) and microscopic (bacteriophage) heroes fighting dysentery at the Western Front of World War I. Interweaving Views of Tales, Scales, and Heroes “The Invisible War: A Tale of Two Scales” works its magic, interweaving the stories of two rarely discussed topics – dysentery and bacteriophage – and two rarely intertwined fields of study – science and history. The resulting story is a rich tapestry full of action and information at both the macroscopic and microscopic levels. “The Invisible War” tells about Annie, a nurse at a field hospital at the Western Front of World War I. In her nursing experience, Annie has learned the symptoms and consequences of dysentery, at a time when the cause wasn’t well understood and no reliable cure was known.

Book review: The Hidden Half of Nature

Book review: The Hidden Half of Nature

Our Little Hidden Helpers What do the human gut and plant roots have in common? Interactions with helpful microorganisms. How do both influence human health? Interactions with helpful microorganisms. In The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health by David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé weave a fascinating story of their journey understanding the importance of microbes in agricultural and human health. Hidden Half weaves together stories of science and society, data and personalities to explore how manufactured diets – whether chemical fertilizers for agriculture or high-fat, high-sugar, low fiber diets for people – have damaged our health.The authors use excellent examples and analogies to deliver the science to a general audience.