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Viral Con Foils Drug-Resistant Microbes, May Nix Need For Poop Transplants (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the courtesy-flush dept.

schwit1 writes: The researchers, led by immunologists at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, got started on the idea of harnessing a viral decoy knowing that such germs normally manipulate and prune the gut microbiome. The community of viruses that bustle in human guts -- called the virome or microvirome -- trigger anti-microbial immune responses that can put the microbial communities on lock down, preventing new microbes from colonizing. Such a state of "colonization resistance" in the gut could thwart harmful germs from moving in, particularly when the microbiome is imbalanced and vulnerable after antibiotic treatments, the researchers hypothesized -- and they found they were right.

16 of 33 comments (clear)

  1. Web scale? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    This is interesting from a test bathroom but can these viruses replace poop at web scale?

    1. Re:Web scale? by dsmatthews9379 · · Score: 1

      I'm not so sure, poop clouds are already a well established phenomena.

  2. Re:This title by flacco · · Score: 1

    I'm pretty sure it was created by a time-traveling editor for the New York Post from 1972.

    --
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  3. I think I understand TFS... by squiggleslash · · Score: 2

    I think it's talking about gut bacteria and using highly resistant beneficial bacteria to prevent harmful bacteria moving in if someone is on anti-biotics (or something vaguely like that anyway.) But what is a "Poop transplant"?

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    1. Re:I think I understand TFS... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      But what is a "Poop transplant"?

      It's something you search for on Pornhub, I think.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    2. Re:I think I understand TFS... by Hylandr · · Score: 2

      The word that everyone is missing is 'Probiotics'.

      Replace one word with something unintelligible and an old article can be recycled into something new.

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      ~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
    3. Re: I think I understand TFS... by jouassou · · Score: 3, Informative

      Sometimes, after heavy antibiotics, important bacteria that you have in your intestines are wiped out by the antibiotics. To restore balance to your gut after heavy antibiotics, the usual option is to withdraw some poop from another person, and transplant that into your intestines, so that you get back the bacteria that are supposed to live there. TFA is about a way to prevent this from becoming necessary.

    4. Re:I think I understand TFS... by Snotnose · · Score: 1

      A poop transplant is used to replace the bacteria in someone's gut. Start with a heavy dose of antibiotics to kill what's there already. Then you take a pill containing someone else's poop to start a new biome. Mary Roach's Gulp has a chapter on it, and the whole book is a blast to read.

    5. Re:I think I understand TFS... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

      I think it's talking about gut bacteria and using highly resistant beneficial bacteria to prevent harmful bacteria moving in

      No. The summary is so badly written that hard to tell what it is about, but the researchers tricked the mouse immune system into suppressing gut viruses so that the beneficial bacteria could recover faster after antibiotics. Here is a link to the paper.

      But what is a "Poop transplant"?

      Fecal bacteriotherapy

    6. Re:I think I understand TFS... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Exactly what it sounds like. If someone has a dodgy gut microbiome (say due to large doses of antibiotics to cure something else) then one way to give back the bugs they need to have a healthy gut is to take poo (full of the sort of bacteria you need for a healthy gut function) from a healthy person and... well, would you prefer that in pill form or as a suppository?

    7. Re:I think I understand TFS... by Chikungunya · · Score: 1

      I understood the paper differently, researchers used gut viruses to trick the mouse immune system to go into a "colonization resistance" state that prevent the appearance of pathogenic bacteria, eventually they only needed to directly stimulate the immune system to reach the same state.

  4. What a relief by somenickname · · Score: 1

    I've been dreading my poop transplant for weeks.

  5. Re:Has Slash been taken over by aphasics? by lhowaf · · Score: 1

    The use of "poop" and the HS level vocabulary puts the term "colonizing" in question.

  6. Re:Has Slash been taken over by aphasics? by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    I've never heard "skid" in that context before, and I've been reading slashdot a long time.

  7. Re:The word is feces by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    Those are pinkies. The feces are the waters off the coast of New Jersey.

  8. It's a VIRAL agent FFS by cellocgw · · Score: 1

    Doesn't anyone have **any** reading comprehension any more? EVEN TFS, albeit clumsily, explains it correctly: that it's viral agents controlling the ability of bacteria to attach to the host and grow.

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