Less is more but not in a good way – less microbes lead to more antibiotic resistance

In the United Kingdom, University of Manchester researchers found that the less microbes you have in your body, the more resistant to antibiotics they become. This is one case where you want more, not less, as the more microbes you have in the body, the better antibiotics work to get rid of the nasty ones. Researchers discovered that low population density microbes were more likely to mutate which led to increased antibiotic resistance, but those in denser microbial populations mutated much less. They analyzed 70 years of data and almost 500 different mutation measurements to conduct this study, which they hope will lead to understanding and improving the role of microbes and antibiotics.