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Comment by ianai | Hacker News Reader

So how difficult would it be to selectively remove Desulfovibrio bacteria from a patient?

Probably you’d clear the gut completely with antibiotics and then repopulate it. And do the same with household family members.

Which wouldn’t be selective. Do wonder how effective this bacteria is at long term survival in a host. The source sounds specific enough (certain types of water reservoirs?). It could be beneficial to have a way to test for them - even if it’s something like a take home Covid test.

Point being I’m sure many people experience a gut level desire to avoid PD and anything like this.

Not selective, true, but we don’t have any better way to do this today.

More selective antibacterial treatments (perhaps some sort of tailored bacteriophage) would be a valuable development for many reasons, and might be just over the horizon. Unfortunately antibiotics are not especially lucrative, and the broader the spectrum (just what we don’t want) the more opportunities to get some revenue.

I suspect a breath test would be possible as is available for H Pylori.

> a gut level desire to avoid PD

Thank you for this.

There is a two-way link between gut bacteria and immunity. Immunity often forces composition of gut bacteria regardless of supplementation. Pro/pre-biotics often have no effect, we are still missing something.

"No effect" seems overly strong. From what I've read, pro/pre-biotics do help, but it's transitive and fades with time after a treatment. Troublesome, of course, as a company would much rather sell a transitive treatment than something once and done.

I’ve never understood the point of taking a probiotic unless you’d been taking antibiotics first. The various ecological niches in your gut biome would already be populated.

There is pretty minimal labeling of probiotic capsules in the grocery store (grr, Orrin Hatch) but then again nobody really knows anyway. I had my gut cleaned out due to a heavy course of antibiotics last summer and just repopulated it by kissing my partner and eating unpasteurized joghurt. Not especially scientific either, but it worked.

For example, covid wreaks havoc in the gut which might cause tilt towards bacteria producing ammonia which then leaks to blood stream, causing the brain fog. Supplementing prebiotics like lactulose can help to suppress this effect.

Before or after we'd developed a few good Desulfovibrio-targeting bacteriophages?

Antibiotics?

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