Can microbiome transfer replace antibiotics over time? Can the microbiome have an antibiotic-like effect? This question has become timely following an experiment at the Salk Institute.
The research team has named the process, first described in the journal Cell, the Cooperative Defense System, whereby a test animal is given what is absolutely certain to be a lethal amount of a pathogen, then its diet is modified (in this case, it is given a higher iron diet – see: bone broth therapy..) and the test animals survive the intervention and recover instead of dying.
Without antibiotics, simply by influencing their diet, modification was sufficient to prevent the lethal bacterial effect.
This seems a very important publication, which fundamentally changes many currently accepted ideas, and which has received relatively little attention. Many will probably support it, and many will seek to refute it. In any case, translated, it means that there is a solution beyond antibiotics, and it will have to be sought in the context of nutrition, the gut and the microbiome.
Source:
Karina K. Sanchez, Grischa Y. Chen, Alexandria M. Palaferri Schieber, Samuel E. Redford, Maxim N. Shokhirev, Mathias Leblanc, Yujung M. Lee and Janelle S. Ayres:
Cooperative Metabolic Adaptations in the Host Can Favor Asymptomatic Infection and Select for Attenuated Virulence in an Enteric Pathogen.
Cell, 2018. Published: August 09, 2018 DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.