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These days, antibiotics are no silver bullet. In fact, if you get them in the hospital, you may end up with an additional infection. Like the bug Clostridium difficile, or C. diff — which infects more than 300,000 Americans a year and kills some 14,000. C. diff flourishes in the post-antibiotic, microbe-free landscape of your gut. But there is a way to stop it — a fecal transplant. That cocktail of microbes from a healthy person's gut can rein in a C. diff outbreak. The question is not eewww? It's: what are the transplant's active ingredients?
如今，抗生素并非治病良方。事实上，如果你在医院注射了抗生素，你可能最终会被感染上另外一种疾病。像艰难梭状芽胞杆菌，或艰难梭菌——每年，被这类细菌感染上的美国人不下30万，其中死亡人数达近1万4千人。艰难梭菌普遍存在于使用过的抗生素器皿中，以及显微镜看不到的人体内脏。不过，有种方法可以解决这一问题——代谢物移植。寄生在健康人内脏中的某种微生物，其代谢产生的混合物能够抑制艰难梭菌的繁殖。问题不是这些代谢物很脏，而是代谢物中的有效成分是什么？
Well, one of them appears to be a bacterium called Clostridium scindens. Because in past studies, people and mice that harbored C. scindens were protected against a full-blown C. diff infection. So researchers dosed mice with the good guy, C. scindens, after a bout of antibiotics. And the treatment did indeed ward off C. diff, compared to a cocktail of other microbes, or nothing at all.
其中一种有效成分是一种叫做Clostridium scindens的细菌。因为，在以往的研究中，体内寄生着C. scindiens的人或老鼠能免于遭受艰难梭菌的全面攻击。于是科学家给注射过抗生素的老鼠服用C. scindiens.。与其他微生物的代谢物相比，或不用对比，我们就能知道这种疗法确实能够抵御艰难梭菌。
C. scindens makes a living by breaking down bile, the researchers say, and it's those secondary products that seem to inhibit C. diff. The findings are in the journal Nature.
科学家说，C. scindiens通过分解胆汁生存，并寄生在那些次生代谢产物中。该研究发表在《自然》杂志上。
This work could lead to more targeted probiotic treatments. But study author Eric Pamer of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center says it's worth remembering that when it comes to microbes, the sum is often greater than its parts. "In some ways I would say this is far more complex than an orchestra, in that there are many more interdependencies, and many of which we just don't understand yet, but that are starting to be illuminated by ongoing work." Now, at least, we know one of the featured performers.
根据这项研究，可以进行更多有针对性的益生菌治疗。但史隆凯特琳癌症研究中心的学者艾瑞·帕莫（Eric Pamer）说，值得记住的是，当涉及到微生物时，总数总是大于部分之和。“在某些方面，我想说的是，这远比管弦乐队的组成要复杂多了，它包含了更多的相关关系，其中还有许多是我们不能理解的，但随着研究的继续，情况开始变得明朗了。”至少，现在我们知道了其中一种典型的有效成分。
