butyrate for gut infections

[Guest guest]

I searched this forum for butyrate and didn't notice that anyone had

cited this article yet:

http://tinyurl.com/yuf7qr

This paper is free, as is the " comment in " editorial. I read the

editorial, but not the original paper.

The editorial says that butyrate induces the intestinal epithelia to

produce an antimicrobial peptide. Rabbits were infected with

Shigella and then once diarrhea was noted, half of the rabbits were

given 0.14 mmol/kg of sodium butyrate by mouth twice daily. The

other half were given saline as a negative control. Butyrate was

reported to suppress fecal titers of shigella 100-fold in a day, and

1000-fold in 2 days, compared with the controls. This was said to

mirror clinical improvements.

Apparently Shigella has a way of shutting off the host's production

of the antimicrobial peptide. Butyrate at the doses used in the

rabbits restored their production of the antimicrobial peptides.

Presumably this might be applicable to other gut infections. I

don't know what the side effects of butyrate would be. Sodium

butyrate is available commercially:

http://www.nextag.com/sodium-butyrate/search-html

though I haven't crunched the numbers to see if the usual dose is on

par with that used in the rabbits.

Another approach, apparently, is to consume fibers that are known to

be fermented by gut bacteria into butyrate. I haven't bothered to

remember which fibers those are. Commensal gut bacteria appear to

be the usual source of butyrate. Antibiotics likely reduce the

endogenous production of butyrate by killing off commensal bacteria,

which I'm guessing might predispose to secondary gut infections.

In my case, though, I avoid " FODMAPs " since they may provoke small

intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Doing that, along with using

vancomycin to treat C diff resolved my decades-long GI problems. So

I'm not in the market for butyrate. Just thought I'd mention it.

Matt