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