“Get me more, mummy!” demands one youngster bacterium, pointing to the drops of antibiotic reaching the colony headquarters.

Come on! FOR REAL?

Sadly very true and it is not even that infrequent either! I only became aware of this after reading about a study, where researchers in HMS, led by Dr. George M. Church, collected soil samples in an experiment, attempting to search for more bio-diversity and were stunned to see that as they added antibiotics to these bacterial cultures, the bacteria didn’t seem to mind at all!

Unlike human beings, bacteria tend to like sharing. The more they share their strategic defenses, the more prosperity they end up living in. Again, to our dismay, such fear was translated into reality, as this has already extended to the pathogenic minorities of the bacterial world in a new study, published in January in the International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease. Scientists, in China, have stumbled upon a strain of tuberculosis-causing bacteria, called Mycobacterium tuberculosis, INCAPABLE of growing adequately in the absence of rifampicin. This is as ominous as such news can get.

This strain was discovered as physicians attempted to treat a TB-infected patient with a regimen which included rifampicin. Unexpectedly, his condition worsened and only upon the removal of rifampicin did he start feeling better, until eventually full recovery. Already, reports of multidrug-resistant TB “MDR” have been around for some time. Normally, the treatment course includes more than 1 drug to be able to effectively kill the bacteria. Apparently, the bacteria have found a way to get around that!

We can only wonder: which antibiotic is next?

Researchers at Yale & the University of Chicago were faced with a surprising conclusion based on their scientific experimentation on mice. Unlike the common belief that microbes are in fact “bad” & possess a harmful threat to our health, some of these bacteria prove their innocence. Mice, that were exposed to common bacteria in the normal gut flora, were protected against the development of Type I diabetes. Previous research had shown that mice, exposed to killed Mycobacterium tuberculosis, were also protected. So, this means that mice that grow in their natural habitat are better off than the ones raised in the much improved sanitary conditions of the lab.

This comes to support the hypothesis many scientists have lately adopted. They tend to believe in a directly proportional realtionship between a person’s exposure to parasites, bacteria, worms, etc.. within the surrounding evironment and his immunity. The more, the better..that is within limits of course.

This actually makes perfect sense to me. It is really obvious when you see, for example, people living in third world countries with mosquitoes hovering around and considered normal. But when they travel abroad for a while and come back, they get different sorts of allergies & rashes from those previously “harmless” mosquitoes. What parasites and microbes do for you is not all bad. Unfortunately, I had to experience this dilemma.

Source: ScienceDaily