New discoveries about the bacterial inhabitants of our bodies are being published every week and what we are learning about our ‘microbiome’ could be as important for our long-term future as any discoveries arising from landing probes on comets in outer space (albeit a great achievement).
Thanks to studies at Cornell University by Ruth Ley and her colleagues we now have proof that the composition of an individual’s gut microbiome is influenced not just by environmental exposure but also by the genetics of the host.
Pennsylvania scientists have made a very important observation during experiments on the intestinal microbiome of newborn mice. They found that mice treated with antibiotics soon after birth develop an altered intestinal microbiome. Bacteria numbers in the intestines are reduced, and the types of bacteria are changed – not always for the better.
This work chimes with the more worrying discovery by Stanford University School of Medicine that giving antibiotics to animals may actually help spread Salmonella in infected animals rather than having the desired effect of reducing it. This was discovered when some Salmonella-infected mice that were given antibiotics became sicker and began shedding far more bacteria in their faeces than they had before.
Learning about the microbiome clearly has a lot to tell us about how we deal with undesirable and health-threatening microbes in future and that perhaps antibiotics are not the panacea we thought they were. Furthermore, as delegates at the recent pharmaceutical microbiology (Pharmig) conference in Nottingham, UK learned, these discoveries about microbiomes can also have implications for cleanroom microbiology and how we work in and clean cleanroom environments.
Yet more surprising is the recent research from scientists at the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Nebraska, which showed that a particular virus was capable of reducing the IQ and cognitive skills of infected mice. Even more surprising is that the virus was plant-derived.