Short-Term Antibiotic Treatment Has Differing Long-Term Impacts on the Human Throat and Gut Microbiome

By Hedvig E. Jakobsson, Cecilia Jernberg, Anders F. Andersson, Maria Sjölund-Karlsson, Janet K. Jansson, L. Engstrand. PLoS ONE, 2010

1,106 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Antibiotic administration is the standard treatment for the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, the main causative agent of peptic ulcer disease and gastric cancer. However, the long-term consequences of this treatment on the human indigenous microbiota are relatively unexplored. Here we studied short- and long-term effects of clarithromycin and metronidazole treatment, a commonly used therapy regimen against H. pylori, on the indigenous microbiota in the throat and in the lower intestine. The bacterial compositions in samples collected over a four-year period were monitored by analyzing the 16S rRNA gene using 454-based pyrosequencing and terminal-restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP). While the microbial communities of untreated control subjects were relatively stable over time, dramatic shifts were observed one week after antibiotic treatment with reduced bacterial diversity in all treated subjects in both locations. While the microbiota of the different subjects responded uniquely to the antibiotic treatment some general trends could be observed; such as a dramatic decline in Actinobacteria in both throat and feces immediately after treatment. Although the diversity of the microbiota subsequently recovered to resemble the pre treatment states, the microbiota remained perturbed in some cases for up to four years post treatment. In addition, four years after treatment high levels of the macrolide resistance gene erm(B) were found, indicating that antibiotic resistance, once selected for, can persist for longer periods of time than previously recognized. This highlights the importance of a restrictive antibiotic usage in order to prevent subsequent treatment failure and potential spread of antibiotic resistance.

Subfields: Epidemiology, Molecular Biology, Molecular Medicine

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/703bc55a1d37a9dad0e9a87501248e68955c9fbb

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Epidemiology

In Molecular Biology

In Molecular Medicine

Citations in the corpus

Factors affecting the composition of the gut microbiota, and its modulation (2019, background): “Similarly, the use of clarithromycin in Helicobacter pylori treatment causes a decrease in the population of Actinobacteria (Jakobsson et al., 2010), while ciprofloxacin has been shown to cause a decrease in that of Ruminococcus (Dethlefsen et al., 2008).”
Impact of antibiotics on the human microbiome and consequences for host health (2022, background): “An- tibiotic administration for the eradication of Helicobacter pylori demonstrated that the antibiotics could affect the indigenous microbiota and lead to the development of resistant strains which can persist for years after treatment (Jakobsson et al., 2010; Sjölund et al., 2003).”
Human Gut Microbiota and Gastrointestinal Cancer (2018, background): “pylori infection with amoxicillin, clarithromycin, and PPIs can alter the indigenous gut microbiota to cause a long-term impact [218].”
Defining the Human Microbiome (2012, background): “Other antibiotics also tend to produce results that differ substantially between subjects[62, 63] and even body sites[64].”
Long-term impacts of antibiotic exposure on the human intestinal microbiota. (2010, background): “…administration on the throat microbiota and found that the throat bacterial http://mic.sgmjournals.org 3219 Downloaded from www.microbiologyresearch.org by IP: 54.70.40.11 On: Fri, 31 May 2019 20:56:34 community was more resilient than the faecal bacterial community (Jakobsson et al., 2010).”
Shifting the balance: antibiotic effects on host–microbiota mutualism (2011, background): “Therefore, although antibiotics are designed to target pathogenic organisms, related members of the microbiota are also affected, often leaving an imprint on the gut community long after the antibiotics have been remove”