There are already “good” bugs, or bacteria, that contribute to your body’s healthy microbiome. Good bacteria helps you fight off the bad stuff.
In what could be the opposite, or at least an alternative, to that harsh hand sanitizer lotion you’re carrying around on a keychain for when you touch something sticky on a doorknob, researchers are studying how a lotion that puts good bacteria to work against the bad might help more effectively keep us healthy.
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Dermatologists at the University of California, San Diego used a customized cream with “antimicrobial peptides” on people who suffered from itchy eczema, where the antimicrobials were scarce.
As the Associated Press reports:
[The researchers] tested five volunteers with atopic dermatitis who had Staph aureus growing on their skin’s surface — what’s called colonization — but didn’t have an infection. Researchers culled some of the rare protective bacteria from the volunteers’ skin, grew a larger supply and mixed a dose into an over-the-counter moisturizer. Volunteers had the doctored lotion slathered onto one arm and regular moisturizer on the other.
On those with the good bacteria salve, much, if not all, of the staph was gone after a day.
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They researchers’ new approach is undergoing clinical trials now, so you won’t see the “good bug” lotion in pharmacies yet — the test subject sample size was small so it’ll likely need more study — but someday, itchy skin sufferers could benefit from rubbing down with the right live bacteria.
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