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In a separate paper, researchers from the University of British

April 3, 2017 by Kimberly Parks

In a separate paper, researchers from the University of British Columbia (UBC) conducted a study on the health of people with different levels of antibiotic use at different age groups, a group that includes people who are at risk for certain infections. They compared the health of 12 people at different ages—aged 20-34 and 55-89—and found evidence of a significant drop in the levels of bacteria that are present in those groups. This pattern is consistent with what researchers found in a 2013 study by Palleja and colleagues.

The new study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, also found that many people with a history of antibiotic use were able to recover to an overall normal microbiome level in six months. That's because the amount of bacteria in those samples were much lower than what was found by the UBC researchers.

Palleja and his colleagues are also looking at the microbiome in children, because for many children, the microbiota that they collect and use are different from the body of bacteria that they would normally be exposed to. But this is a new study that could have implications for the microbiome, because it's so new in so many ways.

Palleja and colleagues were particularly interested in the effects of the antibiotics that they used on the gut microbiome. Some of the new findings are in line with recent research that suggests that some of the effects of antibiotics may be more pronounced in children and adolescents. But as with the previous study, the results are still preliminary and there are still questions about the long-term health effects of these antibiotics.

But for now, Palleja and colleagues do not know the exact number of people who recovered to a normal microbiome level. But they do know that there is a chance that a group of people with a history of antibiotic use are less likely to be able to be infected with harmful bacteria and that there could be a link between the infections and the levels of bacteria in the gut that they use. That could be a possible explanation for why bacteria are so prevalent in the gut.

That said, this research is a first step in understanding how long-term antibiotic use affects the microbiome and how to prevent or treat it. One potential explanation has been that the use of antibiotics can be associated with certain health problems, such as infections that cause antibiotic-resistant bacteria or other infections that can affect intestinal function or metabolism.

But as the researchers point out, there are still many unknowns about the impact of these antibiotics on the gut.

"Our gut microbiome is not entirely well understood," said