test/expected/SLASHDOT/0102641010.header

   1 0Study Finds Probiotics 'Not As Beneficial For Gut Health As Previously Thought' (theguardian.com)      null/SLASHDOT/0102641010                70
   2 i  Thursday September 06, 2018 @11:30PM (BeauHD)
   3 i  from the contrary-to-popular-belief dept.
   4 i
   5 i    An  anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The gut
   6 i    microbiome  is  the sum total of all the micro-organisms living
   7 i    in  a  person's  gut, and has been shown to play a huge role in
   8 i    human  health.  New  research  has  found probiotics -- usually
   9 i    taken  as  supplements  or  in foods such as yoghurt, kimchi or
  10 i    kefir  --  can hinder a patient's gut microbiome from returning
  11 i    to  normal  after  a  course of antibiotics, and that different
  12 i    people  respond  to  probiotics in dramatically different ways.
  13 i    In  the  first  of  two  papers  published in the journal Cell,
  14 i    researchers  performed  endoscopies and colonoscopies to sample
  15 i    and  study  the  gut microbiomes of people who took antibiotics
  16 i    before  and  after  probiotic  consumption.  Another group were
  17 i    given  samples  of  their  own gut microbiomes collected before
  18 i    consuming  antibiotics.  The  researchers found the microbiomes
  19 i    of  those  who  had  taken  the probiotics had suffered a "very
  20 i    severe  disturbance."  "Once  the  probiotics had colonized the
  21 i    gut,  they  completely  inhibited  the return of the indigenous
  22 i    microbiome  which  was  disrupted during antibiotic treatment,"
  23 i    said  Eran Elinav, an immunologist at the Weizmann Institute of
  24 i    Science   in  Israel  and  lead  author  on  the  studies.  The
  25 i    scientists  also  compared  the  gut  microbiomes  of  the  gut
  26 i    intestinal  tract  of  25 volunteers with that of their stools.
  27 i    They  found  that stool bacteria only partially correlated with
  28 i    the  microbiomes  functioning inside their bodies. "So the fact
  29 i    that  we all almost exclusively rely on stool in our microbiome
  30 i    research  may  not be a reliable way of studying gut microbiome
  31 i    health,"  said  Elinav.  In  the  second paper, the researchers
  32 i    examined  the  colonization  and  impact  of  probiotics  on 15
  33 i    people  by  sampling  within their gastrointestinal tract. They
  34 i    divided  the  individuals  into  two  groups:  one were given a
  35 i    preparation   made   of   11  strains  of  very  commonly  used
  36 i    probiotics  and  the  other  were given a placebo. Of those who
  37 i    were   given   probiotics,   he   said,  "We  could  group  the
  38 i    individuals  into  two  distinct groups: one which resisted the
  39 i    colonisation   of   the   probiotics,  and  one  in  which  the
  40 i    probiotics  colonized  the  gut and modified the composition of
  41 i    the gut microbiome and the genes of the host individual."
  42 i