Powerful Antibiotic Found to Alleviate Organ Damage from High Blood Pressure

News

Powerful Antibiotic Found to Alleviate Organ Damage from High Blood Pressure

Powerful Antibiotic Found to Alleviate Organ Damage from High Blood Pressure

Intestinal health significantly impacts overall well-being. One of the latest research findings supporting this notion suggests that altering the gut bacteria in rats using antibiotics can mitigate the damage high blood pressure sometimes inflicts on the heart and kidneys.

The World Health Organization reports that hypertension, also known as high blood pressure, affects approximately 1.28 billion adults worldwide and is a leading cause of global mortality.

Powerful Antibiotic Found to Alleviate Organ Damage from High Blood Pressure

While many are aware that high blood pressure can lead to severe heart issues like heart attacks and strokes, it also causes serious harm to the kidneys. In fact, in the United States, hypertension is the second most common cause of kidney failure, second only to diabetes.

To reduce the impact of high blood pressure on the kidneys, researchers turned their attention to a body part that is gaining increasing focus in studies: the gut.

Specifically, they treated the gut of hypertensive rats with two antibiotics. One, called polymyxin B, which treats Gram-negative bacteria, had no effect. However, another antibiotic, vancomycin, had a significant impact on reducing kidney inflammation caused by high blood pressure.

Vancomycin is used to treat Gram-positive bacterial infections and is commonly prescribed for streptococci, enterococci, and antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections. Due to its potent antimicrobial properties and relatively low resistance, it is often considered a “last-line” therapy in clinical settings.

Vancomycin also reduced the incidence of hypertensive heart disease, a condition that thickens the heart muscle, making it harder to pump blood. Interestingly, neither of these antibiotics lowered blood pressure. Nonetheless, this discovery is promising for the research team.

Moritz Immanuel Wimmer, a co-author of the study and a researcher at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, stated, “Our study suggests that altering the gut microbiota by administering non-absorbable antibiotics in a rodent model can improve hypertension-induced kidney damage and inflammation, unrelated to blood pressure. In the future, we hope to achieve these effects without using antibiotics and further investigate the potential mechanisms behind the observed kidney protection.”

Increasingly, research confirms a connection between the microbiota in the gut and various health benefits and issues, including muscle injury healing, longevity, depression, childhood allergies, and more.

The current research findings will be presented at the American Society of Nephrology’s Kidney Week, held this week in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.