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How Friendly Bugs Protect Us

How Friendly Bugs Protect Us	243 Views
posted on Tuesday, June 03, 2008

THAT GUT FEELING: HOW FRIENDLY BUGS PROTECT US
By Linda Geddes
New Scientist
May 28, 2008

Original Link

The "good bacteria" that inhabit our guts just got even better. As well as crowding out undesirable or dangerous organisms, they may also release molecules that reduce inflammation and protect against colitis.

Bacteroides fragilis is a common bacterium found in the human gut that produces a molecule called PSA, and mouse studies have suggested that PSA can influence the development of immune cells called T cells.

To investigate further, Dennis Kasper at Harvard Medical School and his colleagues inoculated mice whose immune systems were developing with either PSA-producing or non-producing strains of B. fragalis, and with another common bacterium called Helicobacter hepaticus, which can cause colitis in mice.

"Mice inoculated with normal B. fragalis were protected from disease," says Kasper.

Easing inflammation

Further experiments showed that PSA inhibited the production of chemicals by intestinal immune cells that usually trigger inflammation in response to infection with H. hepaticus.

Oral PSA also protected animals from developing colitis, raising the possibility that PSA and other molecules produced by "good" bacteria could eventually be used to treat inflammatory disorders in humans.

"These results show that molecules of the bacterial microbiota can mediate the critical balance between health and disease," says Kasper.

He cautions that PSA is unlikely to be the only factor in colitis, while B. fragalis is unlikely to be the only bacterium capable of producing molecules that affect the development of the human immune system.

However, it lends new support to the so-called "hygiene hypothesis", which states that reduced exposure to infections during early childhood may increase the risk of allergic and autoimmune disease.

"It may be that diseases like colitis are related to low numbers of organisms like B. fragalis compared to organisms like helicobacter," says Kasper.

Critical interactions

He proposes that the human genome does not encode all the factors needed for the development of a healthy immune system, but that our health depends on critical interactions with the collective genomes of our gut flora.

"The implication that intestinal bacteria actively network with the host's immune system highlights the importance of the composition of the microbiota for overall health," Kasper says.

"If specific classes of bacteria have indeed evolved to promote the host's health, then disease may well result from the absence of these organisms and their beneficial molecules."


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