New!Stay informed with our freeemail newsletter.
advertisement
Science News
from research organizations

E. coli gain edge by changing their diets in inflammatory bowel disease

Date:
November 5, 2019
Source:
Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan
Summary:
Researchers describe how bad bacteria gain a foothold over good bacteria in IBD and how something as simple as a diet change might reverse it.
Share:
advertisement

FULL STORY

What if you had to plan your outings based on how your stomach felt that day or where the nearest restroom is located? For many people with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), their guts have an inordinate effect on their daily quality of life.

One of the most common forms of IBD, called Crohn's disease, is characterized by inflammation within the digestive tract and can lead to severe diarrhea, pain and weight loss. What causes IBD is still a mystery, but scientists now know that the gut microbiome, composed of the trillions of bacteria that make their home inside the intestines, are key players.

In a new paper inNature Microbiology, Michigan Medicine researchers describe how bad bacteria gain a foothold over good bacteria in IBD and how something as simple as a diet change might reverse it. "The same bacteria are present in healthy and inflamed digestive tracts," says Nobuhiko Kamada, Ph.D., of the division of gastroenterology in the department of internal medicine. "They just change their competition. We wondered what is the mechanism behind this?"

AlthoughE. coli, the notorious bacteria behind many cases of food poisoning, is present in a normal healthy gut, the disease-causing form of the bacteria is able to outcompete its more benign cousins when the gut is inflamed. In earlier work within the Michigan Microbiome Project , Kamada's team showed that the bad version ofE. coliis usually held in check by goodE. coliand other beneficial bacterial species through the metabolism of carbohydrates, the preferred source of nutrients forE. coli. Under inflammation however, the amount of good bacterial species is reduced, leaving less available sugar forE. colito use and grow. Yet, the disease-causingE. coliare still able to take over.

The team hypothesized that the badE. colimust change their dietary preference from sugar to something else, giving it an edge over other bacteria. In fact, their experiments with mouse models found that the badE. colideveloped a taste for amino acids, particularly serine, when their environment was inflamed. "We found that pathogenicE. colihad upregulated genes for serine metabolism," said first author Sho Kitamoto, Ph.D., a research fellow in Kamada's lab. Furthermore, the team was able to control the overgrowth by feeding mice with IBD a low serine diet.

Together, these findings hint at a possible mechanism for controlling bad bacteria through nutrition. "Of course, we could use antibiotics to kill the bad bacteria," says Kamada. "But the gut microbiota plays a beneficial role to the hosts biology, and antibiotics kill the good guys along with the bad guys."

They hope to eventually collaborate with clinicians to investigate the effects of personalized therapeutic diets for patients with IBD. Says Kamada, "We have to carefully consider a patient's disease status. One type of diet might be effective in patients under remission but not in patients with active disease."

advertisement


Story Source:

Materialsprovided byMichigan Medicine - University of Michigan.注:内容可以编辑为圣yle and length.


Journal Reference:

  1. Sho Kitamoto, Christopher J. Alteri, Michael Rodrigues, Hiroko Nagao-Kitamoto, Kohei Sugihara, Stephanie D. Himpsl, Malak Bazzi, Mao Miyoshi, Tatsuki Nishioka, Atsushi Hayashi, Tina L. Morhardt, Peter Kuffa, Helmut Grasberger, Mohamad El-Zaatari, Shrinivas Bishu, Chiharu Ishii, Akiyoshi Hirayama, Kathryn A. Eaton, Belgin Dogan, Kenneth W. Simpson, Naohiro Inohara, Harry L. T. Mobley, John Y. Kao, Shinji Fukuda, Nicolas Barnich, Nobuhiko Kamada.Dietary l-serine confers a competitive fitness advantage to Enterobacteriaceae in the inflamed gut.Nature Microbiology, 2019; DOI:10.1038/s41564-019-0591-6

Cite This Page:

Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan. "E. coli gain edge by changing their diets in inflammatory bowel disease." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 5 November 2019. /releases/2019/11/191105104409.htm>.
Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan. (2019, November 5). E. coli gain edge by changing their diets in inflammatory bowel disease.ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 29, 2023 from www.koonmotors.com/releases/2019/11/191105104409.htm
Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan. "E. coli gain edge by changing their diets in inflammatory bowel disease." ScienceDaily. www.koonmotors.com/releases/2019/11/191105104409.htm (accessed October 29, 2023).

Explore More
from ScienceDaily

RELATED STORIES