RICKY WILSON/Stuff
Siouxsie Wiles knows mice aren’t people.
Dr Siouxsie Wiles is a microbiologist and associate professor at the University of Auckland.
OPINION: Between Covid-19, influenza, winter colds, and now monkeypox, you’ve probably had enough of viruses. I’m hoping a new study might help you see them in a different light – one where they are used to treat diseases.
Worldwide, millions of people suffer from inflammatory bowel disease – IBD for short. New Zealand has one of the highest rates, with at least 20,000 people here having it. IBD is the catch-all term for several conditions, the two most common being Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Symptoms vary, but when the disease flares up, the inflammation can be so severe it sends people to hospital.
While the causes of IBD are still unclear, one factor that’s getting a lot of attention is the gut microbiome. That’s where this new study comes in.
Researchers compared the gut bugs of 537 IBD patients and healthy controls from France, Germany, Israel and the US. Despite living in different countries and eating different diets, nearly 40% of the IBD patients had particular strains of a bacterium called Klebsiella pneumoniae.
READ MORE:
* Tuberculosis has vaccine lessons for Covid
* Coeliac disease linked to bacteria exposure
* Benign gut virus may be older than humanity, might be useful as therapy
To see whether that was just a coincidence, the researchers isolated some of these Kp2 strains from the stools of the Israeli IBD patients and gave them to mice born and reared without a gut microbiome. The Kp2 bacteria were able to colonise the mice and, more importantly, cause gut inflammation.
That begged the question if Kp2 caused inflammation in mice, could the inflammation be reduced by killing the bacteria?
An easy way to kill bacteria is to use antibiotics, but they tend to kill more than just the bacteria we want to target. That’s where viruses come in. Bacteriophages are viruses that can infect and kill bacteria and they are found everywhere. What’s exciting about bacteriophages is that they can be very specific, only infecting certain strains or species of bacteria.
Supplied
These amazing little viruses might one day help relieve the suffering of at least some people with these awful inflammatory conditions.
Analysing sewage and some stool samples from healthy volunteers, the researchers found 41 bacteriophages that were able to infect and kill only their Kp2 Klebsiella strains. Finding so many was important. Bacteria can evolve so that bacteriophages are no longer able to kill them. If given as a cocktail, the bacteriophages should still work even if some bacteria become resistant to one of them.
The researchers settled on a five-bacteriophage cocktail. Mice given the cocktail once a week for three weeks had less Kp2 bacteria in their guts and less inflammation. How exciting is that?
I know people aren’t mice but testing these bacteriophages in IBD sufferers might not be too far off. That’s because the last part of the study was a phase one human safety trial. Fourteen healthy volunteers took a liquid formulation of a two-bacteriophage cocktail twice a day for three days and, apart from two people experiencing some nausea, suffered no ill effects.
Currently, Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis are lifelong conditions, with many people diagnosed when in their teens to their 30s. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that these amazing little viruses might one day help relieve the suffering of at least some people with these awful inflammatory conditions.
Good viruses may treat inflammatory bowel disease & Latest News Update
Good viruses may treat inflammatory bowel disease & More Live News
All this news that I have made and shared for you people, you will like it very much and in it we keep bringing topics for you people like every time so that you keep getting news information like trending topics and you It is our goal to be able to get
all kinds of news without going through us so that we can reach you the latest and best news for free so that you can move ahead further by getting the information of that news together with you. Later on, we will continue
to give information about more today world news update types of latest news through posts on our website so that you always keep moving forward in that news and whatever kind of information will be there, it will definitely be conveyed to you people.
Good viruses may treat inflammatory bowel disease & More News Today
All this news that I have brought up to you or will be the most different and best news that you people are not going to get anywhere, along with the information Trending News, Breaking News, Health News, Science News, Sports News, Entertainment News, Technology News, Business News, World News of this made available to all of you so that you are always connected with the news, stay ahead in the matter and keep getting today news all types of news for free till today so that you can get the news by getting it. Always take two steps forward
Credit Goes To News Website – This Original Content Owner News Website . This Is Not My Content So If You Want To Read Original Content You Can Follow Below Links