By Carissa Wong.
A computer illustration of a bacterium.
Science photo library
Consuming a type of bacterium found in soil helps mice avoid a blood infection that could potentially lead to sepsis, and the research could one day lead to treatments for people as well.
The activity of Enterococcus faecalis is what causes Sepsis. These microbes can live in the human gut without causing disease, but in people who take antibiotics for long periods or treatments that weaken their immunity, they can spread the disease to the blood. This is a life threatening condition.
Experiments in mice show that consuming a probiotic can prevent blood infections. There was a type of bacterium called Bacillus subtilis. These are forms of the bacterium that are resistant to environmental damage. They influence the growth of otherbacteria in the intestine when they enter the gut.
Michael Otto and his colleagues at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Maryland mimicked the treatment that people with blood cancer often receive, by giving mice the drug cyclophosphamide and then following it up with a cocktail of antibiotics.
The team fed the mice with either B. subtilis or a salt solution before giving them an E. faecalis dose. The mice that had received the placebo treatment had E. faecalis in their blood, but the ones that had received the probiotic avoided blood infections.
Read more about the use of CRISPR-based antibiotics.
The team found E. faecalis in the blood of the control mice, but not in the mice that were fed the probiotic.
The team found that the gut leakier E. faecalis produces, helps them spread into the blood, and that the probiotic could be preventing this effect.
The group fed mice with a non-digestible fluorescent chemical and then measured how much of this marker was in their blood after 4 hours. The concentration of the marker was twice as high in mice that had received placebo as it was in those that had received probiotic. The increase in gut leakiness is counteracted by the probiotic.
The gut linings of mice that were treated with placebo had huge disorganised structures compared to the mice that were treated with probiotic. The guts of placebo mice were missing projections in the gut wall that absorb food.
Otto says that it is important to note that this work defines specificbacteria that can prevent sepsis caused by another particular species of bacterium. Otto says that this marks a distinction from the claims that are often made for other probiotics that suggest they have broad health benefits but without offering much detailed understanding of the process.
The public health implications of addressing sepsis in a safe manner are large, and have never been so dramatically seen in the public eye.
Science Translational Medicine is a journal.
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