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A new study suggests that intestinal microbes can engulf the drugs we take before drugs have the chance to reach their targets.
Our entrails are essential to our ability to use all kinds of nutrients that would not otherwise be available to our systems – and the more we learn about the microbiome, the more it becomes clear that it's essential for our health in general.
But the trillions of intestinal bacteria with which we coexist (mainly) peacefully can also play against us.
Researchers at Harvard University have discovered that some intestinal bacteria can degrade drugs, such as those used to treat Parkinson's disease, rendering them ineffective or even toxic.
Their discovery could one day help scientists develop drugs that block or bypass intestinal attempts to devour drugs before they reach their targets.
Intestinal bacteria can "eat" or metabolize drugs such as Parkinson's dopamine replacement therapy before they achieve the intended goals, making them less effective (file).
Americans spend hundreds of billions of dollars on drugs each year – but these expenses do not guarantee the effectiveness of the drugs we take.
The medications are, ultimately, 100% effective and their effectiveness varies from one person to another, depending on an almost infinite range of factors, including other drugs. , body weight and, as we now know, two types of metabolism.
Any medication taken orally – in the form of a pill, capsule or liquid – must travel through the gastrointestinal system.
But to reach a target outside the gastrointestinal tract, the drug must be designed to withstand attempts to digest the human body.
We already knew that drugs had to have a coating or other characteristics to make them impermeable to innate gastric acids in the human body, which allowed us to degrade and glean the energy of most of the foods we eat.
However, as we learn more about the trillions of other life forms, namely the bacteria that live in the human intestines, scientists have begun to find that these bacteria act as "brilliant chemistry" for break down other elements that our body would not otherwise. to be able to, including fiber, and some medications.
After discovering how the microbes acted on heart failure drugs, Harvard researchers turned to Parkinson's to see what intestinal flora could bring to the drugs.
They tested the intestinal microbial activity on a drug called L-dopa.
L-dopa is a treatment for Parkinson's disease, an incurable neurological condition characterized by dopamine deficiency.
The drug is supposed to replace a part of the neurotransmitter in a patient's brain, but previous studies have shown that only 1 to 5% of the drug's payload actually crosses the blood-brain barrier and reaches its target. The dosage should be high. and the effects are less dramatic than doctors and patients can hope for.
It is now associated with another drug that prevents the body from metabolizing dopamine, but scientists still wanted to know where the dopamine was going.
"There is a lot of unexplained metabolism, and it varies a lot from one person to the other," said Vayu Maini Rekdal, first author of the study.
In the past, antibiotics had effectively prevented the body from breaking down dopamine. The researchers suspected that the intestinal bacteria that these drugs were eliminating could in turn destroy dopamine.
Rekdal and his team tested L-dopa on a bank of human intestinal bacteria species.
They found one in particular that engulfed L-dopa every time the scientists presented it.
For now, it's bad news for L-dopa, but it gives scientists a tool to develop better defense of the important drug against the metabolism of the intestine.
"In the process of drug development, we should think about these microbial chemists and the molecules that they might be sensitive to when we start developing drugs," said Rekdal, PhD candidate.
And, he suggests, scientists should ask, "Can we use microbial enzymes and profiles as biomarkers to try to predict and predict how many medications you need" to treat an individual with drugs? minimal side effects.
His hope is that drug makers could develop new molecules that would prevent the particular microbe species that he and his team developed from eating L-dopa and hopefully make it one day a longer version. effective.
Their study, published in the Science Journal, also led to a fortuitous secondary fortuitous discovery: another piece of the intestine-brain connection puzzle.
"Our discovery of an organism chewing dopamine … raises questions about how these microbes interact with our nervous system," said Rekdal.
"We do not yet know what it means, but it does reveal a molecular link between our nervous system and microbes."
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