Sunday, April 8, 2012

Lifestyle Choices Doctors Make

This article is behind a paywall, so I will try to include the important bits-

Antibiotics may make you fat 
To investigate whether overusing antibiotics could also play a part in the rise of obesity, Blaser's team fed infant mice low doses of penicillin to mimic doses given to farm animals. After 30 weeks, penicillin-fed mice were between 10 and 15 per cent bigger and twice as fat as drug-free mice. When the team looked at the mice's gut bacteria, they found that the antibiotic-fed mice had a different complement of bugs to the untreated mice. Low doses of antibiotics had seemingly shifted the balance of certain gut microbes, reducing the numbers of Lactobacillus, which is a "good" bacterium linked to a lower risk of cancer recurrence.
To confirm that the mice owed their supersize to an altered gut microbiome, the group turned to germ-free mice, which are bred in a sterile environment and have no gut bacteria. Within five weeks of being given gut bacteria from the mice fed antibiotics, the once germ-free mice were 35 per cent larger than mice with a regular microbiota. In the initial experiment, the biggest mice were those that had started antibiotic treatment from birth. Even mice that were only given drugs for four weeks ended up as large as mice on antibiotics for the full 30 weeks. This suggests that gut flora may be most vulnerable to disruption in the earliest moments of life, says Blaser.
Antibiotics used to treat children may also have a detrimental effect on their immune systems, says Blaser. In a separate study in mice, his team mimicked the short courses of higher dose antibiotics that young children tend to receive for infections. The group then investigated whether these pulsed doses were having any effect on helper T-cells - a group of immune cells that secrete chemicals to direct the immune response. They found that the levels of these chemicals were significantly lower in antibiotic-fed mice, suggesting that their immune systems may have become compromised.
They should have noticed this decades ago.
But they assumed they are right and everyone else is willfully disobedient.
It sorta skewed their experimental design and data analysis.

(just wanted to mention I am now trying to take off 15 pounds I rapidly gained after the tooth issues...)