What if antibiotic resistance was a natural characteristic of humans?
First spotted by air in 2008, a village in the Yanomami tribe could be proof of this. Its inhabitants who live in the Amazon rainforest of Venezuela present a great antibiotic resistance, 30 times larger than the average.
In 2009, a medical team led by Maria Dominguez-Bello, a microbiologist from New York University, took an interest in the 54 individuals of this village of the Yanomami tribe. She takes saliva, stool and skin samples from 34 clan members and analyzes them. Verdict: these Yanomami have a microbiota (the set of bacteria, fungi and viruses in the body, also called the microbiome) much more varied than that of rural communities geographically close to this population. This microbiota is even twice as diverse as that observed in a control group of Americans, assure the researchers in their study published in the journal Science Advances.
“This result is not surprising since the variety of the microbiome decreases when we eat industrial food, when we take antibiotics, or when we wash our hands with antibacterial gel”, explain the authors of the study.
No cases of obesity or malnutrition have also been observed among members of the tribe, which feeds on fish, frogs, insects, bananas and a fermented melon drink.
Genes 30 times more resistant than the average
Even though they have never taken antibiotics or eaten animals raised on drugs, these members of the Yanomami tribe have genes 30 times more resistant to antibiotics than the average traditionally seen. “Half a dozen genes could even inactivate modern drugs,” note the researchers.
“This is further evidence that antibiotic resistance is a natural feature of the human microbiome, but is ready to be activated and amplified for greater resistance after using antibiotics,” says one of the authors. , quoted by Le Télégramme. According to the researchers’ hypotheses, the Yanomami’s intestinal bacteria have evolved in such a way as to fight against a large number of toxins to which they are exposed in their environment, and whose molecular structure is similar to that of the antibiotics of our Western medicine.
For Christina Warinner, anthropologist at the University of Oklahoma (United States), cited in the journal Science, this discovery “suggests that the antibiotic resistance is ancient, diverse and surprisingly widespread in nature ”.
“This study underlines the need to develop research towards new antibiotics”, conclude the authors, otherwise “we will lose the battle against infectious diseases. “
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