Probiotics, hailed by some as a cure for all kinds of digestive ailments and recommended by many GPs alongside antibiotics, may not be as universally beneficial for gut health as previously thought.
The gut microbiome is the sum total of all the micro-organisms living in a person’s gut, and has been shown to play a huge role in human health. New research has found probiotics – usually taken as supplements or in foods such as yoghurt, kimchi or kefir – can hinder a patient’s gut microbiome from returning to normal after a course of antibiotics, and that different people respond to probiotics in dramatically different ways.
In the first of two papers published in the journal Cell, researchers performed endoscopies and colonoscopies to sample and study the gut microbiomes of people who took antibiotics before and after probiotic consumption. Another group were given samples of their own gut microbiomes collected before consuming antibiotics.
The researchers found the microbiomes of those who had taken the probiotics had suffered a “very severe disturbance”.
“Once the probiotics had colonised the gut, they completely inhibited the return of the indigenous microbiome which was disrupted during antibiotic treatment,” said Eran Elinav, an immunologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and lead author on the studies.
Gene expression – the process by which gene DNA is made into a functional gene product such as protein or RNA – was also disturbed in the guts of those who had taken the probiotics, with the detrimental effects lasting for six months.
However, these negative effects were not observed in the group of people who were given back the original microbiome that had been collected before antibiotic use; their microbiome normalised within days, said Elinav.
But reintroducing the original, indigenous microbiome after antibiotic use is probably not a scalable solution for all people who take antibiotics, he cautioned.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
