We know that exposure to antibiotics eliminates part of the intestinal microbiota with the risk of loss of beneficial bacteria for life, after multiple exposures. This study from the University of Copenhagen is more optimistic, without however calling into question the rigorous use of antibiotics. However, his findings, presented in the journal Nature Biology, suggest that the composition of gut bacteria recovers almost completely after antibiotics.
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The Copenhagen researchers point out that the billions of bacteria in the gut affect our health in multiple ways, including immune function and metabolism. A rich and diverse gut microbiota is now believed to promote health by providing the human host with many skills to prevent chronic disease. In contrast, a low diversity of the intestinal ecosystem is rather associated with chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, asthma and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
The microbiota takes about 6 months to “recover” globally: antibiotics are the cause of bacterial destruction and for this reason it has always been more or less assumed that the repeated use of antibiotics burdens bacterial diversity and deprives the microbiota of good bacteria, with adverse health effects. This international team shows here that when 3 antibiotics are given to healthy young men for 4 days, the eradication of intestinal bacteria is almost complete, but this is followed by a gradual recovery of most bacterial species. This recovery of the diversified microbiota takes place over a period of approximately 6 months.
But a few good bacteria are still missing: After six months, however, participants are still missing 9 of their beneficial bacterial species and a few new, unwanted bacteria have colonized the gut… So if the gut microbiota of humans in good health is resilient to antibiotics and able to recover after short-term exposure – and here to 3 different antibiotics – there remain some sequelae of this exposure on the diversity of the intestinal bacterial ecosystem.
Again, antibiotics should only be used on the basis of clear evidence of a bacterial cause of infection. If we are able to almost completely regenerate our gut microbiota, then there is, in light of these data, a risk of permanent loss of beneficial bacteria after multiple exposures to antibiotics over the course of life.