The minuscule viruses that infect beneficial bacteria living in sauerkraut can be used to help maintain a healthy gut during treatment with antibiotics, a new study in mice suggests.
Yogurt is often thought of as a good source of healthy bacteria for the gut. All bacteria, including those in our intestines and in the food we eat, are infected by such viruses, known as phages.
Sauerkraut contains even more bacteria than yogurt, as long as it has not been pasteurized or treated with preservatives, the researchers said in a presentation at the Digestive Disease Week meeting in Washington.
To make the sauerkraut, researchers fermented cabbage in a salt solution, then removed the bacteria from the sauerkraut juice and purified the phages.
Next, the researchers gave antibiotics to mice, to disrupt the balance of their healthy gut bacteria. Antibiotics typically kill off healthy bacteria and leave room for disease-causing bacteria to take their place, explained study leader Cristina Coffman of The Biomedical Research Institute of New Mexico in Albuquerque.
A few days later, some of the mice were fed the bacteria-infecting viruses from the sauerkraut juice, in their drinking water. Two weeks later, proportions of healthy gut bacteria were found to be depleted in the untreated mice, but the sauerkraut phages had prevented this disruption in the treated mice, the researchers found.
“In addition to this effect on the microbiome, sauerkraut (phages) also had an interesting biologic impact” the researchers said. Weight gain associated antibiotic treatment appeared to be blocked by sauerkraut phages, they said.
The researchers tested a mixed population of phages against the effects of five different antibiotics, Coffman said.
“We are hoping to learn more about how the phages shape the bacteria populations in the intestines and to find therapeutic uses for the phages,” Coffman said.
This newsletter was edited by Bill Berkrot; additional reporting by Shawana-Alleyne-Morris.
