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Antibiotics damage the colonic mucus barrier in a microbiota-independent manner
- nashashmi 2y agoThe standard treatment for H pylori is two antibiotics For 14 days.
- thaumasiotes 2y agoWell, the standard treatment is to ignore it. It's present in over a third of people and causes no symptoms.
- throwuxiytayq 2y ago20% of patients have symptoms and all carriers are at risk of developing cancer.
- thaumasiotes 2y agoAll non-carriers are also at risk of developing cancer. How much worse does H. pylori make that situation? Combining some reports from various places: > Infection of the stomach with H. pylori is not the cause of illness itself; over half of the global population is infected but most are asymptomatic. > Infection with H. pylori is responsible for around 89 per cent of all gastric cancers ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicobacter_pylori https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicobacter_pylori ) > 770,000 deaths of gastric cancer were estimated in 2020 ( https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(22)00134-1/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5... ) 58 million deaths worldwide in 2019 according to https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-deaths-per-year https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-deaths-per-year ; I picked 2019 instead of 2020 because 2020 features a spike in deaths for reasons that I'm assuming are unrelated to cancer. That puts gastric cancer deaths from H. pylori at just under 1.2% of all deaths, which frankly seems ridiculously high. https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/stomach.html https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/stomach.html suggests that stomach cancer is 1.8% of all cancer deaths (in the USA), which is perfectly compatible with the above statistics as long as cancer is the cause of 67% of all deaths. The death rate from stomach cancer is about 3 per 100,000 people (in the USA). The overall death rate, per https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/79486 https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/79486, is 864 per 100,000, putting stomach cancer at 0.3% of all deaths. In the USA. Is this actually something we worry about? Most people are infected; virtually no one gets cancer.
- bongodongobob 2y ago[flagged]
- nashashmi 2y agoNo symptoms? Excess passing of gas and acid reflux and GERD. They might be a series of ignored symptoms. Not a lack of symptoms. PSA: get yourself checked. The treatment will literally destroy all your gut bacteria and renew your stomach to a healthier state. It will be a miserable two weeks though.
- thaumasiotes 2y agoNo, no symptoms.
- itishappy 2y ago> Infection with H. pylori is responsible for around 89% of all gastric cancers, and is linked to the development of 5.5% of all cases of cancer worldwide. Although the data varies between different countries, overall about 1% to 3% of people infected with Helicobacter pylori develop gastric cancer in their lifetime compared to 0.13% of individuals who have had no H. pylori infection. H. pylori-induced gastric cancer is the third highest cause of worldwide cancer mortality as of 2018. Because of the usual lack of symptoms, when gastric cancer is finally diagnosed it is often fairly advanced. More than half of gastric cancer patients have lymph node metastasis when they are initially diagnosed. I've got symptoms, but this would scare me even if I didn't.
- ggm 2y agoNothing to remediation or repair in this. So, observational in mice, gut is gut and probably a good analogue for any non-ruminating mammal. But, how to mitigate, how to repair, what to do afterward is missing. We need antibiotics. I don't want to go back into the world my parents lived in before they existed, I'd prefer to be in the world I was born into when they still had significant effect without wildcat over-use. Would phage therapy avoid the problem?
- Valgrim 2y agoI don't think this result reflects all antibiotic treatments: "RESULTS Oral antibiotic treatment disrupts the colonic mucus barrier" Intraveinous administration may or may not cause the same effect, or a similar effect. Maybe oral antibiotics is generally a bad idea because it disrupts the microbiome, but in other forms it's generally fine.
- Mistletoe 2y agoIt’s not permanent. Just take your antibiotics and when you don’t need them your gut will go back to normal.
- jb1991 2y agoSource? This article doesn’t say anything about that.
- theultdev 2y agoThey are living, they reproduce. Damaged ones die off. That's why you're told to take yogurt/other fermented foods after taking antibiotics, to provide a reproductive environment for them to grow. However it's still a risk you could kill off a whole species and lose their function, so probably best not to take antibiotics unless you really have to. It's an easy analysis process though, you try to recover for a couple days, if you cannot and no virus is detected, you take antibiotics. If it's a bacterial infection and it's spreading you have to take antibiotics, otherwise you die and all of your microbes die with you.
- bongodongobob 2y ago[flagged]
- anonu 2y agoYou should flag it then. If enough people agree - it will disappear. Otherwise, either it will fall off the front page or a healthy discussion will ensue. HN democracy at work.
- bongodongobob 2y ago[flagged]
- rockemsockem 2y agoI see this is your first day, welcome to the Internet
- bongodongobob 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lightedman 2y ago"We are not doctors" No, but I did hold a First Responder certification, which gives me some qualification to peruse and actually speak on the subject, as I have medical experience and training to some degree (and things like shattered bowels were something we had to deal with frequently due to motorcycle accidents, so we got training there.) It's already known that antibiotics do all sorts of things other than kill pathogenic organisms in our bodies, well known. What isn't known is the full breadth of the harmful effects they have and how to remediate them. This is yet another effect discovered. More will come.
- 2y ago
- junto 2y agoAs a counter to the negative comment about this submission, I’d like to state that I really appreciate seeing content like this on HN.
- fnord77 2y agoI have crohn's disease, who can I sue?
- Diti 2y agoThat’s a question you should be asking to your lawyer, not to HN.
- Madmallard 2y agoI have had very high (3x upper limit normal or more) levels of fecal secretory IgA ever since I took antibiotics in 2014. Also numerous health issues and allergies that developed ever since. Nothing has seemed to really work. I have to take antihistamines just to not feel like I need to go to the emergency room from reacting to things all the time. Pretty tilting since I developed these problems at such a young age. It felt like it completely robbed my life from me. And I'm fairly certain the antibiotics did it because the problems literally just developed in the months following, and some almost immediately after taking them. One of the drugs, ciprofloxacin, seemed to cause severe connective tissue problems that are actually permanent. It is over 10 years later and I still extremely readily tear tendons and ligaments, when before I took them I never once had any problems with any of my tendons or ligaments no matter what I did and no matter how often I did it. My first tendon issues ever were the month after taking it.
- OutOfHere 2y agoDid you bother taking or trying some good probiotics and maybe prebiotics? How about L-glutamine, collagen hydrolysate, vitamin C, MSM, glucosamine, chondroitin? Also quercetin. There is a newssurvey software that you can use to do some automated survey of what's out there (if you don't want to do it manually). My experience with antibiotics has been the opposite, that they have saved me more times than one, but then I never used ciprofloxacin.
- Madmallard 2y agoI have tried everything
- OutOfHere 2y agoProbiotic products can be very diverse in their coverage and usefulness. The one I like is Epic Pro 25. In any case, how about folate as Quatrefolic? It has shown relevance in a related issue such as Ehlers-danlos affecting connective tissue. It is unclear if your homocysteine level is normal or not, but if it's not, it can probably be resolved by various B vitamins in good forms and doses. In any case, I doubt you have tried newssurvey software to do a survey on: 1. What causes ciprofloxacin (or its class fluoroquinolones) to harm connective tissues? 2. What is its resolutions, whether pharmacological or nutritional or via supplements, or anything else?
- OutOfHere 2y agoIt is most important to take a very good probiotic capsule about three hours after taking every antibiotic pill. If you choose not to take it, the shock to the gut can be profound. Also, things like L-glutamine are good for helping the gut heal to the extent that it can.
- bongodongobob 2y ago[flagged]
- OutOfHere 2y agoChocolate milk contains sugar, not probiotics. I would consider it fairly detrimental to adult gut health. It is okay for children, for teenagers, not for grownups.
- bongodongobob 2y ago[flagged]
- OutOfHere 2y agoSugar is pretty bad for teeth, and also risks diabetes. Sugar also suppresses the immune systems, thereby seriously risking infections and even cancer. Sugar is effectively a carcinogen.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago> Water does not contain probiotics so it is more worse. You can solve this problem easily by drinking from any local water source instead of your tap.
- nradov 2y agoWhich are the "good" probiotic capsules? A lot of this stuff is total snake oil with little or no clinical efficacy.
- bongodongobob 2y ago[flagged]
- OutOfHere 2y agoGrownups can consume a small spoon of cacao powder instead. In this way they can skip the sugar.
- algobro 2y agoAnnual vaccines are much more convenient and are preferable to one-off treatments like antibiotics, (which reduce the nations GDP as well because of they "cure" the problem cheaply), and have proven to be safe. I call for an immediate ban on antibiotics. Only high ranking members of society should have access. And people with good social credit scores.
- bottom999mottob 2y agoUnfortunately we still need oral antibiotics for things like
- bottom999mottob 2y agoUnfortunately we still need oral antibiotics for things like Lyme Disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. As tick-borne illnesses go up with longer summer seasons, we'll probably have to prescribe more antibiotics. Oh well
- theGnuMe 2y agoUmm, we still need oral antibiotics for A LOT of things..
- bottom999mottob 2y agoYes I never disputed that. Just listing an example for why I don't think we'll ever be post oral antibiotics
- tmnvix 2y agoA lot of comments here claiming we need antibiotics. I can't disagree. But what can be said about the antibiotics we use on livestock? From my understanding it is a heck of a lot. When we then eat the meat do we essentially ingest 'unnecessary' antibiotics and do they contribute to the type of effect described in the article?
- mort96 2y agoI have never heard anyone suggest that the meat sold by the meat industry contains antibiotics, and from some quick googling, it seems like US federal regulations require that meat is "antibiotics-free" (meaning antibiotic levels below some threshold), and they regularly screen the meat https://www.ars.usda.gov/news-events/news/research-news/2019/pork-essentially-free-of-veterinary-drug-residues/ https://www.ars.usda.gov/news-events/news/research-news/2019... I didn't find what exactly the regulatory limit for "antibiotics-free" is, but from a glance, this looks like a non-issue. Now over-use of antibiotics in meat production is obviously a huge problem for other reasons, namely that it breeds antibiotic resistant bacteria.
- snovv_crash 2y ago... in mice. Please let's not forget the important suffix.
- thenerdhead 2y agoAntibiotic misuse is a huge problem and even leading to resistance. It is a good thing that we are developing verbose pathogen panels to ensure we don’t prescribe antibiotics when we have viral infections and vice versa. Additionally the upcoming AI discovered targeted antibiotics will be game changer to remove negative or benign pathogens while maintaining your good cultures. The challenge is that some become friends and some become foes depending on the diversity and quantity of certain species. Gut microbiome discoveries are going to change the way we see disease in this next decade.
- rasengan 2y agoslippery elm. iykyk
- itchyouch 2y agoBasically, antibiotics are causal for leaky gut in mice. Pretty compelling findings and the ramifications are huge!