MONDAY, March 26 (HealthDay News) -- Antibiotics can prolong cystic fibrosis patients' lives, mete the drugs also help treatment-resistant bacteria increase in bulk in their lungs, a new, minute study suggests.

The findings from the 10-year inquiry suggest, but do not prove, that the current rule of aggressive antibiotic treatment for cystic fibrosis patients may not everlastingly be the best approach.

It's public to use antibiotics to control pest in cystic fibrosis patients' lungs, only maintaining a more diverse range of bacteria in the lungs may improve some patients stay healthy longer, according to study higher author Dr. John LiPuma, a examination professor of pediatrics and communicable diseases at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor.

"The regular wisdom has been that as patients with cystic fibrosis age and become sicker, in the same manner with their lung disease progresses, more and besides bacteria move in," he declared in a university news release. "But our study -- what one. was the first to examine the bacterial communities in cystic fibrosis patients' lungs from one side to the other a long period of time -- indicates that's not the kind of happens."

Aggressive use of antibiotics truly lowers the diversity of lung bacteria, resulting in infections that are increasingly uncompliant to treat. A more diverse common of lung bacteria may help last the most dangerous strains in repress, the researchers noted.

"What we normally practise is essentially carpet bombing with antibiotics," explained LiPuma. "However, that which we found is that over time this finally helps treatment-resistant bacteria by getting rid of their competition."

He uttered the findings may be a leading step toward developing new treatment methods, of that kind as more focused use of antibiotics or on the same level giving cystic fibrosis patients beneficial bacteria.

The study was published March 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Cystic fibrosis is a of long duration disease in which the body produces dull, sticky mucus that clogs the lungs. The hoard of the mucus leaves people propense to serious, hard-to-treat and recurrent infections. Eventually, the repeated infections bring to nought the lungs.

In the study, researchers examined the bacteria from six patients collected through the whole extent of eight to nine years. Half of the patients had a comparatively stable type of the disease and the others had the greater quantity typical, faster-progressing form. The investigators conducted DNA resolution on bacteria in 126 sputum samples.

Over time, the researchers set up that bacterial diversity declined, yet the overall even of bacteria remained fairly constant. The study authors explained that this resource a small number of organisms increase to take the place of those that be delivered of been killed off by antibiotics.

More intelligence

The U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has other thing about cystic fibrosis.

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