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These days, antibiotics are no silver bullet. In fact, if you get them in the hospital, you may end up with an additional infection. Like the bug Clostridium difficile, or C. diff — which infects more than 300,000 Americans a year and kills some 14,000. C. diff flourishes in the post-antibiotic, microbe-free landscape of your gut. But there is a way to stop it — a fecal transplant. That cocktail of microbes from a healthy person's gut can rein in a C. diff outbreak. The question is not eewww? It's: what are the transplant's active ingredients?
如今，抗生素并非治病良方。事實上，如果你在醫(yī)院注射了抗生素，你可能最終會被感染上另外一種疾病。像艱難梭狀芽胞桿菌，或艱難梭菌——每年，被這類細菌感染上的美國人不下30萬，其中死亡人數(shù)達近1萬4千人。艱難梭菌普遍存在于使用過的抗生素器皿中，以及顯微鏡看不到的人體內(nèi)臟。不過，有種方法可以解決這一問題——代謝物移植。寄生在健康人內(nèi)臟中的某種微生物，其代謝產(chǎn)生的混合物能夠抑制艱難梭菌的繁殖。問題不是這些代謝物很臟，而是代謝物中的有效成分是什么？
Well, one of them appears to be a bacterium called Clostridium scindens. Because in past studies, people and mice that harbored C. scindens were protected against a full-blown C. diff infection. So researchers dosed mice with the good guy, C. scindens, after a bout of antibiotics. And the treatment did indeed ward off C. diff, compared to a cocktail of other microbes, or nothing at all.
其中一種有效成分是一種叫做Clostridium scindens的細菌。因為，在以往的研究中，體內(nèi)寄生著C. scindiens的人或老鼠能免于遭受艱難梭菌的全面攻擊。于是科學家給注射過抗生素的老鼠服用C. scindiens.。與其他微生物的代謝物相比，或不用對比，我們就能知道這種療法確實能夠抵御艱難梭菌。
C. scindens makes a living by breaking down bile, the researchers say, and it's those secondary products that seem to inhibit C. diff. The findings are in the journal Nature.
科學家說，C. scindiens通過分解膽汁生存，并寄生在那些次生代謝產(chǎn)物中。該研究發(fā)表在《自然》雜志上。
This work could lead to more targeted probiotic treatments. But study author Eric Pamer of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center says it's worth remembering that when it comes to microbes, the sum is often greater than its parts. "In some ways I would say this is far more complex than an orchestra, in that there are many more interdependencies, and many of which we just don't understand yet, but that are starting to be illuminated by ongoing work." Now, at least, we know one of the featured performers.
根據(jù)這項研究，可以進行更多有針對性的益生菌治療。但史隆凱特琳癌癥研究中心的學者艾瑞·帕莫（Eric Pamer）說，值得記住的是，當涉及到微生物時，總數(shù)總是大于部分之和。“在某些方面，我想說的是，這遠比管弦樂隊的組成要復雜多了，它包含了更多的相關(guān)關(guān)系，其中還有許多是我們不能理解的，但隨著研究的繼續(xù)，情況開始變得明朗了。”至少，現(xiàn)在我們知道了其中一種典型的有效成分。
