Study Examines Effect of Early Microbiota Disruption on Obesity
A recent study examining early microbiota disruption has purportedly suggested “that antibiotic exposure during a critical window of early development disrupts the bacterial landscape of the gut, home to trillions of diverse microbes, and permanently reprograms the body’s metabolism, setting up a predisposition to obesity.” Laura Cox, et al., “Altering the Intestinal Microbiota during a Critical Developmental Window Has Lasting Metabolic Consequences,” Cell, August 2014. Researchers with New York University’s (NYU’s) Langone Medical Center apparently used low-dose penicillin (LDP) to disrupt the gut microbiota of mice in the week before birth or immediately after weaning to measure the life-long metabolic effects.
The results evidently showed that mice receiving LDP in the womb and early in life had increased fat mass compared with mice that received no antibiotics at all. “When we put mice on a high-calorie diet, they got fat. When we put mice on antibiotics, they got fat,” reported lead author Martin Blazer, director of NYU’s Human Microbiome Program. “But when we put them on both antibiotics and a high-fat diet, they got very, very fat.”
To determine whether these metabolic changes were attributable to the antibiotics themselves or the altered microbiota, the study’s authors then transferred bacterial populations from LDP-exposed mice to germ-free mice, discovering “that mice inoculated with bacteria from the antibiotictreated donors were indeed fatter than the germ-free mice inoculated with bacteria from untreated donors.” The researchers also noted that, contrary to expectations, the penicillin did not reduce “total microbial numbers in the gut” but only temporarily suppressed Lactobacillus, Allobaculum, Candidatus Arthromitus, and an unnamed member of the Rikenellaceae family. “We’re excited about this because not only do we want to understand why obesity is occurring, but we also want to develop solutions,” said co-author Laura Cox. “This gives us four potential new candidates that might be promising probiotic organisms. We might be able to give back these organisms after antibiotic treatments.” See NYU Press Release, August 14, 2014.
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