Originally published February 15 2006
Researcher sheds light on the variety of bacteria that live in the human stomach
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
In a telephone interview with the JournalTimes.com, Elizabeth Bik, a research associate in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, discusses the findings of a paper she authored on different species of bacteria that live in the human stomach.
Starting from clues first noticed about 20 years ago, medical science has concluded that a stomach infection with a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori causes inflammation and is a major cause of peptic ulcers.
It turns out that this may be far from the only resident of human stomachs.
Although the stomach is an inhospitable place to live, full of hydrochloric acid and digestive enzymes, research published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that stomachs host many different kinds of bacteria whose benefit or detriment is unknown.
Researchers got stomach samples from 23 patients at a Veterans Affairs hospital in New York City, isolated the DNA they wanted, multiplied it by inserting it into common bacteria, and then determined the sequence of amino acids in those strands of DNA.
"We have looked at which bacteria are present in the stomach and we have found DNA of 128 different, let's say, species."
"We have found a lot of species that are present in the mouth of people, and that's not surprising because every time you swallow a lot of bacteria will leave your mouth and kind of flow down into your stomach."
Are these bacteria living in or just under the mucous coating on the wall?
` But we know that Helicobacter at least is living there."
"We haven't actually looked with a microscope, so I cannot really say whether they're in the mucous or whether they're really attached to the cell wall, but they're kind of between that space.
I want to get back to Deinococcus.
"That's probably the Thermus (a related bacterium.) ` This (Deinococcus) definitely is a bacterium that is able to grow in a lot of inhospitable environments.
"Well I guess both, but in order to understand whether certain bacteria play a role in disease or health, you have to know what is present in healthy people.
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