Probiotics are commercial products that contain healthy bacteria normally found in the gut flora. Each person has billions of bacteria living in their gut. Antibiotics are medications commonly prescribed for infections caused by pathogenic bacteria. Each antibiotic function in a unique way to rid the body of a specific type of bacteria; however, gut bacteria are inadvertently destroyed by antibiotics. The initial step of this project was to test a number of probiotic products to confirm their ability to grow in a medium which will verify that these products do indeed deliver viable gut bacteria to the person ingesting them. Probiotic products are available that contain single strains of bacteria as well as up to thirty different strains in one product. This allows for testing of a cross-section of the gut bacteria which are represented by the bacteria in the probiotics. The second focus of my project was to treat gut bacteria grown on a medium with different antibiotics to test whether any or all of the gut bacteria are in fact destroyed by antibiotics. The human body is host to a vast array of healthy bacteria in the gut. Using an assortment of antibiotics on each probiotic plate offers the opportunity to compare the devastation caused by each antibiotic on the various gut bacteria made available by the probiotics.
Obesity has become a global epidemic, resulting in an increase in obesity-related illnesses and an astounding estimate of 147 million dollars for medically-related costs in the U.
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