The treatment with antibiotics can alter the intestinal flora

A study coliderado by researchers of the Upper Council of Scientific Investigations (CSIC) reveals that the antibiotics produce changes in the microbial and metabolic patterns of the intestine. The researchers, that have analysed for the first time the bacteria, genes, enzymes and molecules that form the microbiota intestinal of patients treated with antibiotics, publish his results in the digital edition of the magazine Gut.

The intestine is populated by a trillón of bacteria, that know in his group like microbiota or intestinal flora, and that have coevolucionado in simbiosis with the human being. According to this work, the treatment with antibiotics can alter this simbiosis from early stages of the therapy.

“Although any of the changes produced are oscillatory, and can be revertidos when finishing the treatment, others seem irreversible”, affirms one of the coordinators of the study, the researcher of the CSIC Manuel Ferrer, that works in the Institute of Catálisis and Petroleoquímica.

The investigation, that has had the collaboration of the Institute Cavanilles of Biodiversidad and Evolutionary Biology of the University of Valencia, the Upper Centre of Investigation in Public Health, the University CEU Saint Pablo and the Centre of Investigation Biomédica in Network in Epidemiology and Public Health, has compared samples of faeces of a patient taken before, during and when finalising the treatment.