Month: April 2014

Loving your bacteria

pills.govWhen my kids were little, I used to joke that bacteria are our friends, so I didn’t worry much when their pacifiers fell on the ground. As an infectious diseases specialist I had also seen the harmful effects of using too many antibiotics – emergence of bad bacteria like MRSA (methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and development of diseases due to killing off of good bacteria (like Clostridium difficile colitis, a serious inflammation of the gut caused by antibiotics). So I also tried to avoid giving them antibiotics. New research suggests that bacteria may be more helpful than we ever knew.

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