[acomjean]

Antibiotics don't wipe out all the bacteria, just some of them. Its a bit of a problem because if some are effected less by the antibiotic, you can change the balance when the bacteria populations bounce back. The bacteria that are there do set up shop and don't like others crowding in.

We don't really enough enough about what should be the optimal mix of bacteria to make someone healthy.

They do "fecal" transplants to help people get back bacteria that are missing.

There was a graduate student talk (an hour) about some of this stuff last spring. slide decked linked to the right.

http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/seminars/2014/in-the-loop-with-p...

[mercurialshark]

I've read a bit about fecal transplants and they apparently have good results. I just wanted to oversimplify and remove as many variables as possible before introducing new ones. No longer liking the idea...

[beltranrm]

Another option is to skip the antibiotic and use a probiotic to nudge your microbiome toward healthier regions. I am aware of two modern probiotics that might help you:

repoopulate - http://www.microbiomejournal.com/content/1/1/3

equilibrium - http://www.generalbiotics.com

Both of them are designed thinking of ecosystems more than individual strains (repoopulate has 33 strains, equilibrium has 115). Of course, these aren’t an alternative to FMT if you’re treating a disease… but for general health/wellness I think they’re both quite good.

disclosure: I worked on equilibrium