Kenya: Good Gut Bacteria Vs Bad - What We Learnt About Antibiotic Resistance From a Community in Nairobi
[The Conversation Africa] Years of antibiotic use have fuelled a rise in bacteria that can survive antibiotics. These antibiotic resistant bacteria are competing with and displacing other bacteria that are naturally present in the human gut, where they play a critical role in maintaining good health. Resistant bacteria have led to increased illness and death from diseases that were once easily…
Antibiotic use has led to an increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which compete with and displace friendly bacteria in the human gut. These resistant bacteria have resulted in more illness and death from diseases that were previously easily treatable with antibiotics. Disease ecologist Eric Ng eno has researched how antibiotic-resistant strains of Escherichia coli bacteria are outnumbering healthy bacteria in the guts of healthy individuals.
Friendly microbes in the gut help with digestion, energy production, and shielding from harmful bacteria. People living and working together tend to have similar gut microbes, forming a background microbial community. Researchers wanted to determine if these microbial interactions influence the presence of antibiotic-resistant E. coli in the guts of people living in a densely populated urban informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya.
They built a statistical model that used three factors - antibiotic use, background microbial communities, and disease-causing agents. The model predicted the presence of resistant E. coli strains. Comparing this model with one that used only background microbial communities as the predictor showed that these communities largely determined which E. coli strains people carried.
Areas where invading resistant bacteria made up a larger share of the local microbial community had higher rates of resistant E. coli. Areas with native non-resistant bacteria had lower rates. Antibiotics, whether severely disruptive or milder, can lead to the takeover of invading resistant bacteria if they disrupt the gut microbiota.
The resistant E. coli's ability to take over depends on the type of antibiotics used. Strategies to reduce antibiotic resistance should be tailored to the local microbial community context. This includes minimizing antibiotic disruption, promoting harmless microbes, and restoring lost microbes, such as through probiotics and eating fermented foods.
Written by urgent.news from AllAfrica Health's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
