A probiotic strain called Bifidobacterium animalis BB-12 was shown in antibiotic users to mitigate the disruptions caused by the drugs, in a recently-published study appearing in Nutrients.
 
Antibiotics are well-known to disrupt the balance of bacterial populations in the gut, a phenomenon known as dysbiosis. This disruption can lead to a number of nutrition-related issues, including a reduction in the numbers and diversity of gut microbiota, as well as decreased production of short-chain fatty acids.
 
“Evidence in humans that probiotics may enhance the recovery of microbiota populations after antibiotic treatment is equivocal, and few studies have addressed if probiotics improve the recovery of microbial metabolic function,” the authors of the present study said – they theorized that administering a yogurt containing the probiotic BB-12 could prevent against the disruptions of fecal short chain fatty acids and microbiota composition.
 
In the study, the authors recruited 42 participants who were placed into a BB-12 group, along with 20 participants who were in a control group. The BB-12 group was given a BB-12 yogurt daily for the first two weeks of the study, while they were also administered amoxicillin/clavulanate for the first week of the study period. Fecal samples were measured for both groups at days 7, 14, 21, and 30. While the baseline characteristics of both groups were the same at the start of the trial, by day 30, those in the BB-12 group saw a significantly smaller decrease in fecal short-chain fatty acid levels (specifically, the short-chain fatty acid acetate) and greater taxonomic profile of microbiota over time than the control group, indicating that taking BB-12 concurrently with an antibiotic treatment could reduce the adverse effect that antibiotics can have on gut health.
 
“We observed a 25% average decrease in fecal acetate at day 30 in the control group, while the levels of acetate in the BB-12 group had returned to near the baseline levels at the same time points,” the authors of the study noted. On day 30, we also observed that the levels of propionate and butyrate were still greatly reduced in the control subjects, with butyrate being nearly 40% reduced from the baseline […] The data from this clinical study are also consistent with our hypothesis that BB-12 supplementation can mitigate antibiotic-induced shifts in the microbiota, and are associated with a quicker return to the baseline microbiota composition, as compared to the control group.” The taxonomy of the participants’ gut microbiota were measured using the Bray-Curtis metric throughout the course of the study.
 
“Future research should extend these findings, and include a more detailed metagenomic and metatranscriptomic analysis of the microbiota, while also expanding the clinical outcomes,” the authors noted.