By Free Republic | Created at 2024-11-22 22:57:42 | Updated at 2024-11-23 04:02:34
5 hours ago
Children's gut bacteria may hold the key to diarrhea treatment
Medical Xpress / Niels Bohr Institute / Nature Communications ^ | Nov. 13, 2024 | Getnet Tesfaw et al
Posted on 11/22/2024 2:56:28 PM PST by ConservativeMind
Researchers have linked chronic diarrhea to a specific pattern of gut bacteria, a discovery that could pave the way for new treatments capable of saving lives.
In developing countries, acute and chronic diarrhea is a widespread problem among children and leads to the deaths of half a million children under the age of 5 every year. Acute diarrhea often resolves on its own and can typically be treated with antibiotics.
In a study, Nielsen and his Ethiopian colleague Getnet Tesfaw mapped the gut microbiome of more than 1,300 children under 5 years of age in Ethiopia. The study's main conclusion is clear: Children with chronic or persistent diarrhea have significantly lower and different bacterial diversity compared to healthy children.
Results indicate that children with chronic diarrhea have an overrepresentation of harmful bacteria, such as Escherichia and Campylobacter, while the presence of beneficial bacteria, such as Faecalibacterium, is significantly reduced.
The study also revealed that children with chronic diarrhea lack bacteria that produce short-chain fatty acids, which are typically produced by beneficial bacteria and play an essential role in gut health.
Acute diarrhea is defined as lasting from one to six days, while chronic diarrhea persists for a week or more. According to Nielsen, the results indicate that chronic diarrhea develops if beneficial, short-chain fatty acids producing microbes are lost to an extent that the children's gut microbiomes, for unknown reasons, fail to recover from after, for instance, antibiotic treatment for acute cases.
According to Tesfaw, the primary focus of treatment should be on designing an optimal diet to help restore the microbiome in affected children.
"In Ethiopia, they have a superfood grain called teff, which is rich in nutrients and fiber. It clearly has the potential to serve as a dietary supplement that could help stop chronic diarrhea," says Nielsen.
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
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Fiber helps surviving friendly guy bacteria create the short-chain fatty acids we all need. Fiber and other nutrients were identified as the outstanding issues with chronic diarrhea patients.
I would add that if antibiotics actually did wipe out classes of helpful bacteria, as stated above, probiotics could also be helpful.
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2 posted on 11/22/2024 2:56:59 PM PST by ConservativeMind (Trump: Befuddling Democrats, Republicans, and the Media for the benefit of the US and all mankind.)
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