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Bacteria can help cure poisoning
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
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Food poisoning: this diagnosis is familiar to many people. Probably, each of us at least once in our lives experienced this unpleasant condition. But some forms of microorganisms are capable of provoking a rather serious intestinal disorder, not limited to ordinary diarrhea. It is no secret that some diseases in medicine are treated according to the principle of "like cures like". This method will soon be applied to food toxic infections.
A group of specialists from Stanford University (United States) led by Dr. Denis Monak discovered the existence of propionate, an auxiliary metabolic product that is formed as a result of the activity of one of the varieties of intestinal microbes. Propionate has the ability to inhibit the development of salmonella (the causative agent of the well-known salmonellosis).
What else is known about propionate? This substance is produced by gram-negative rod-shaped anaerobes that belong to the bacteroides family. These microbes are part of the normal microflora of the human intestine.
"We can observe different reactions to the development of a bacterial infection in different people. In some patients, poisoning manifests itself as a violent clinical picture and requires inpatient treatment, while in others it proceeds almost unnoticed. We set ourselves the task of understanding why this happens," the researchers explain. "The intestinal microbiome is a very complex mechanism that involves billions of representatives of microbial, viral and fungal flora. They closely interact with each other, and it is often almost impossible to isolate individual molecules among other "residents" of the intestinal space."
Scientists analyzed the effect of propionate on bacterial flora, namely salmonella. It was found that the substance affects the quality of the pH environment inside the bacterial cell: as a result, the cell needs much more time to begin to grow and reproduce. With a high concentration of propionate in the intestinal cavity, microbes lose the ability to increase their intracellular pH level, which complicates their functionality. This leads to the death of a huge number of salmonella.
"The information we have obtained through research will be of great benefit in the fight against infectious intoxications and contamination. Perhaps adjustments will be made to the treatment of such diseases. At the moment, antibiotics are the drugs of choice for food poisoning. However, we all know about the disadvantages of antibiotic therapy, and this is not only a mass of side effects, but also the development of resistance in many bacterial strains, which is a real problem. Now, in many cases, antibiotics can be abandoned," the scientists say.
Information published on the website hi-news.ru
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