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World News 'Good' Bacteria Keep Immune System Primed to Fight Future Infections
| 'Good' Bacteria Keep Immune System Primed to Fight Future Infections |
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| Saturday, 30 January 2010 13:49 |
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Scientists have long pondered the seeming contradiction that taking broad-spectrum antibiotics over a long period of time can lead to severe secondary bacterial infections. Now researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine may have figured out why.
The investigators show that "good" bacteria in the gut keep the immune system primed to more effectively fight infection from invading pathogenic bacteria. Altering the intricate dynamic between resident and foreign bacteria -- via antibiotics, for example -- compromises an animal's immune response, specifically, the function of white blood cells called neutrophils.
Senior author Jeffrey Weiser, MD, professor of Microbiology and Pediatrics, likens these findings to starting a car: It's much easier to start moving if a car is idling than if its engine is cold. Similarly, if the immune system is already warmed up, it can better cope with pathogenic invaders. The implication of these initial findings in animals, he says, is that prolonged antibiotic use in humans may effectively throttle down the immune system, such that it is no longer at peak efficiency.
"Neutrophils are being primed by innate bacterial signals, so they are ready to go if a microbe invades the body," Weiser explains. "They are sort of 'idling', and the baseline system is already turned on." Weiser and first author Thomas Clarke, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Weiser lab, recently published their findings in Nature Medicine. ... Source: Science Daily |
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