Antibiotics are the wonder drug of the 20th century, with billions of doses being given every year, and they underpin all of modern healthcare. But using them too often can lead to antibiotic resistance in microbes, which makes these medicines less effective over time. To protect their usefulness, we need a better understanding of how antibiotic resistance emerges and spreads, and how different types, or different ways of giving antibiotics, can lead to different outcomes. This knowledge can help doctors use antibiotics more wisely, improving patient care while also reducing unnecessary use.
One area where antibiotics have a major impact is the gut microbiome - the community of trillions of microbes that live in our intestines and help keep us healthy. While antibiotics kill harmful bacteria, they also affect many helpful ones. This can disrupt the microbial ecology of the gut and lead to a state that is more susceptible to colonization by pathogens, which may take weeks or even months to fully recover. Although researchers have studied these effects for many years, we still do not know how the microbiome recovers after antibiotic treatment.
To learn more, we are collaborating with Tan Tock Seng Hospital and the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID) in Singapore to study a new cohort of patients who are prescribed antibiotics. By using advanced DNA sequencing, metabolomics, and immune-phenotyping we can look at the post-antibiotic recovery process in far greater detail than before. This will allow us to understand not only what triggers microbiome recovery, but also what could protect the host from pathogens colonization and other negative affects of delayed recovery.
This project will give us the tools to predict who might be at risk for drastic microbiome disruption, guide more effective antibiotic usage and identify pre-, pro- and post-biotic supplements that could support healthier recovery after antibiotic use.
