http://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/sydney-scientists-accidentally-discover-antibiotic-to-treat-koalas-with-chlamydia/ar-BBw4Xbs

A team of scientists have accidentally made a breakthrough in the treatment of koalas with chlamydia.

monkey skipper said:

http://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/sydney-scientists-accidentally-discover-antibiotic-to-treat-koalas-with-chlamydia/ar-BBw4Xbs

A team of scientists have accidentally made a breakthrough in the treatment of koalas with chlamydia.

Another penicillin accident?

What was weird was that there 70 percent of koalas affected but less and the treatment was causing problems as well as the loss of production of treatments.

Something needed to change…

Postpocelipse said:

monkey skipper said:

http://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/sydney-scientists-accidentally-discover-antibiotic-to-treat-koalas-with-chlamydia/ar-BBw4Xbs

A team of scientists have accidentally made a breakthrough in the treatment of koalas with chlamydia.

Normal antibiotics can kill koalas’ sensitive gut bacteria, which are essential for digesting eucalypt leaves, and this can lead to starvation.

Adding to the problem, is that one of the only products available to treat chlamydia in koalas is no longer routinely manufactured.

Enter microbiologist Willa Huston from the University of Technology Sydney who was working on antibiotics for chlamydia in humans when luck struck.

After four years of work, Dr Huston and her team devised a molecule that killed chlamydia but preserved other microbes.

The problem was it was not really needed, as there was already a cheap and plentiful supply of antibiotics for humans.

But researchers in a neighbouring lab told Dr Huston about the problem with koalas and chlamydia.

“Science is pretty funny. It was pretty much an accident. It was something we were doing for human chlamydia and it just turned out to be the right application at the right time,” she said.

Vet nurse Natasha Banville from Sydney’s Endeavour Koala Clinic says chlamydia is a major factor in the species’ decline, up there with dog attacks and vehicle strikes.

“It makes the koala sick and can kill koalas but it also causes females to be sterile, so the reproductive rates can really drop away,” Ms Banville said.

She said koala carers were struggling to care for koalas with chlamydia.

“Well unfortunately one of the stock standard treatments for chlamydia disease is now not really commercially available in Australia so we’re really in a bit of a bind of how we treat koalas,” she said.

“We’re certainly very keen for any development of alternative therapies.

Barnacles the koala was one of several being treated at the clinic for chlamydia.

Sadly, just as vets were to give Barnacles the all-clear for chlamydia, tests revealed he had lymphoid cancer.

The cancer is common among koalas and scientists believe it is caused by koala retrovirus, something they also think is linked to chlamydia.

Dr Huston said the finding made the need for an effective chlamydia treatment more imperative.

“It’s vital that we get a chlamydia-specific therapy that we can use to treat this disease much more effectively and look after this important national icon that we all treasure.”
Another penicillin accident?

monkey skipper said:

http://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/sydney-scientists-accidentally-discover-antibiotic-to-treat-koalas-with-chlamydia/ar-BBw4Xbs

A team of scientists have accidentally made a breakthrough in the treatment of koalas with chlamydia.

Excellent! Our wildlife need all the help they can get.

PermeateFree said:

monkey skipper said:

http://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/sydney-scientists-accidentally-discover-antibiotic-to-treat-koalas-with-chlamydia/ar-BBw4Xbs

A team of scientists have accidentally made a breakthrough in the treatment of koalas with chlamydia.

Excellent! Our wildlife need all the help they can get.

Help yeah!!

> Normal antibiotics can kill koalas’ sensitive gut bacteria, which are essential for digesting eucalypt leaves, and this can lead to starvation.

Kicking myself for not seeing that coming. I should have thought of that.

I can’t think of any animals other than koalas that rely so heavily on gut bacteria for survival. Well, termites, but that hardly counts.

> Willa Huston from the University of Technology Sydney who was working on antibiotics for chlamydia in humans when luck struck. Dr Huston and her team devised a molecule that killed chlamydia but preserved other microbes. Researchers in a neighbouring lab told Dr Huston about the problem with koalas and chlamydia.

Good.

Makes me wonder. If I ate koala vomit, would I be able to digest eucalyptus leaves?

mollwollfumble said:

> Normal antibiotics can kill koalas’ sensitive gut bacteria, which are essential for digesting eucalypt leaves, and this can lead to starvation.

Kicking myself for not seeing that coming. I should have thought of that.

I can’t think of any animals other than koalas that rely so heavily on gut bacteria for survival. Well, termites, but that hardly counts.

> Willa Huston from the University of Technology Sydney who was working on antibiotics for chlamydia in humans when luck struck. Dr Huston and her team devised a molecule that killed chlamydia but preserved other microbes. Researchers in a neighbouring lab told Dr Huston about the problem with koalas and chlamydia.

Good.

Makes me wonder. If I ate koala vomit, would I be able to digest eucalyptus leaves?

You’d be able to digest the semi-digested leaves in the vomit.

mollwollfumble said:

> Normal antibiotics can kill koalas’ sensitive gut bacteria, which are essential for digesting eucalypt leaves, and this can lead to starvation.

Kicking myself for not seeing that coming. I should have thought of that.

I can’t think of any animals other than koalas that rely so heavily on gut bacteria for survival. Well, termites, but that hardly counts.

Giant Pandas and hippos

mollwollfumble said:

> Willa Huston from the University of Technology Sydney who was working on antibiotics for chlamydia in humans when luck struck. Dr Huston and her team devised a molecule that killed chlamydia but preserved other microbes. Researchers in a neighbouring lab told Dr Huston about the problem with koalas and chlamydia.

Good.

Makes me wonder. If I ate koala vomit, would I be able to digest eucalyptus leaves?

Baby koalas etc eat pap, so you could try that to prepare you.

>Baby koalas etc eat pap, so you could try that to prepare you.

i’m seeing a market for a new probiotic

Arts said:

mollwollfumble said:

I can’t think of any animals other than koalas that rely so heavily on gut bacteria for survival. Well, termites, but that hardly counts.

Giant Pandas and hippos

According to this article, not Giant Pandas.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/19/hard-to-bear-pandas-poorly-adapted-for-digesting-bamboo-scientists-find

“… pandas have a carnivorous digestive system and lack the gut flora for extracting maximum energy from plants”.

mollwollfumble said:

Arts said:

mollwollfumble said:

I can’t think of any animals other than koalas that rely so heavily on gut bacteria for survival. Well, termites, but that hardly counts.

Giant Pandas and hippos

According to this article, not Giant Pandas.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/19/hard-to-bear-pandas-poorly-adapted-for-digesting-bamboo-scientists-find

“… pandas have a carnivorous digestive system and lack the gut flora for extracting maximum energy from plants”.

They just need to live, I don’t think anything gets ‘maximum’ energy from what it eats or drinks, so that wouldn’t discount the fact the gut flora are still important for extracting most/some/enough of the energy from bamboo.

We’ve all been told that koalas need their gut bacteria to help them detoxify eucalyptus leaves. But this sciencedaily article suggests that this too may be a myth. Perhaps koalas really can cope with normal antibiotics after all.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150513083536.htm

“Summary: With their specialized diet of almost exclusively eucalyptus leaves, do koalas require specialist microbes to help them digest their food? Scientists investigated the composition of bacterial communities in different digestion-associated organs but found no unusual or special microbial communities when they compared these with those of other mammals.”

“Bacteria was thought to play an important role in the digestion of Eucalyptus leaves” … but … “Koala oral, gut, rectal and feces microbiomes were all similar in composition to the microbiomes from the same body regions of other mammalian species. Therefore the unique diet of koalas does not seem to influence koala microbial communities.”

Other articles go on to suggest that the koala digestion of eucalyptus leaves is really due to three factors:
1. A much longer caecum (2 metres) in the digestive tract.
2. A sedentary lifestyle like the sloth that uses little energy.
3. Being very fussy about which Eucalyptus leaves they eat, only eating those with the lowest toxin levels.

Even so, koalas only digest 25% of the leaves they chew.