The Irresistible Resistome: How Infant Diapers Might Help Combat Antibiotic Resistance (sort of)

In this study, nurses collect fecal material by swabbing the babies’ diapers (after the infant’s parents give informed consent). When children are followed up for 2 years or longer, parents collect the stool samples at home and mail them to Dantas’ pediatrician collaborators. The samples are then analyzed in Dantas’ lab. Dantas’ recent findings confirmed his grim hypothesis. The gut microbiomes of antibiotic-treated infants include nearly 800 antibiotic resistance genes to 16 different antibiotics. “We have now definitely shown a clear change in the enrichment of antibiotic resistance genes in infants following the use of antibiotics,” he says. Some of the genes provide resistance to drugs the infants were never exposed to. To explain this finding, Dantas theorizes that resistance genes cluster together and can pass to bacteria as a group. Perhaps most distressing of all is that some of the genes confer resistance to drugs given to patients as a last resort, when other therapies have failed. Bacteria that can resist all available antibiotics are untreatable and potentially lethal. As his team’s data on the negative health effects of antibiotics on infants become stronger and clearer, Dantas hopes to convince clinicians to be more prudent in prescribing antibiotics to very young patients. One of the team’s discoveries already has clear implications: It appears that antibiotics differ in their impact on the microbiome. This finding could help doctors select th...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Being a Scientist Cell Biology Bacteria Cells Drug Resistance Source Type: blogs