Maryn McKenna

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Antibiotics: Connected to Obesity, Diabetes and Stroke?

November 25, 2011 By Maryn Leave a Comment

In consideration of your glaze-eyed tryptophan coma — at least among those who weren’t frightened off by the MRSA-in-turkey news — today’s post is mostly composed of brightly colored pictures. (Also, speculation. You’ve been warned.)

About a week ago, a nonprofit research group called Extending the Cure published the latest in a fantastic series of maps they have been producing for several years, based on public and privately collected data. Earlier iterations have looked at the incidence of various resistant organisms over time. This time, they decided to look instead at the major drivers of resistance, and focused on national data about antibiotic prescriptions, broken down by drug type and by state between 1999 and 2007.

The graphics they produced document both a troubling growth in the use of some precious (because still effective) antibiotic classes, and also a surprising differential in the amounts of antibiotics prescribed in different parts of the country. The rate of use of antibiotics, measured by outpatient prescriptions per 1,000 inhabitants, varied from a low of 533 in Alaska to a high of 1,214 in West Virginia. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: antibiotics, CDC, diabetes, food, food policy, obesity, Resistance, Science Blogs

Antibiotics: Killing Off Beneficial Bacteria … for Good?

August 26, 2011 By Maryn Leave a Comment

It’s an accepted concept by now that taking antibiotics in order to quell an infection disrupts the personal microbiome, the population of microorganisms that we all carry around in our guts, and which vastly outnumbers the cells that make up our bodies. That recognition supports our understanding of Clostridium difficile disease — killing the beneficial bacteria allows C. diff room to surge and produce an overload of toxins — as well as the intense interest in establishing a research program that could demonstrate experimentally whether the vast industry producing probiotic products is doing what it purports to do.

But implicit in that concept is the expectation that, after a while — after a course of antibiotics ends — the gut flora repopulate and their natural balance returns.

What if that expectation were wrong?

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: antibiotics, C.diff, diabetes, microbiome, obesity, Science Blogs

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