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how my microbiome changed on nicotine

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Ulcerative Colitis
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Posted 6/29/2015 12:23 PM (GMT 0)
Just got my results from uBiome. In September, right when I was starting to go on a big flare, I had my microbiome analyzed by uboime. Then, after one year on nicotine (patches-21mg), which has worked INCREDIBLY WELL, I had it analyzed again.

The biggest change was that the number of Proteobacteria decreased.

Before nicotine: 15.74%
after: 0.11
Normal: 3.25
Info below- very, very interesting.

Along with Firmicutes, Proteobacteria are the most common gut microbes in Westerners. Although all of us carry these microbes, folks with inflammatory bowel disease seem to have more Proteobacteria and fewer varieties of other bacteria.

Posted 6/29/2015 12:32 PM (GMT 0)
That is very interesting indeed.
Posted 6/29/2015 2:20 PM (GMT 0)
I think its very interesting that UC people have higher protebacteria. A quick search yielded a paper from 2014 correcting a similar bacterial imbalance in cystic fibrosis patients with a probiotic. Has anyone looked at specifically trying to correct high UC bacteria counts with specific probiotics for this purpose?
Posted 6/29/2015 2:21 PM (GMT 0)
The change in the microbiota could be secondary to the decreased inflammation.

Nicotine has immediate effects on colitis and crohn's.
I have Crohn's and I've smoked tobacco for 3 days to see what will happen. I got worse immediately after the first cigaratte.
Posted 6/29/2015 2:23 PM (GMT 0)
I think its fairly well know that nicotine/cigarettes hurt chrons patients and help Uc.
Posted 6/29/2015 2:33 PM (GMT 0)
My point is, nicotine has immediate effects on ibd. If the benefits are primarily due to the changes in microbiota than it should take more time to notice the healing.
Posted 6/29/2015 2:40 PM (GMT 0)
How do you know the microbiota dont change right away?
Posted 6/29/2015 2:53 PM (GMT 0)
I don't; but even with antibiotics, generally, people with ibd get better after the 3rd day. Effect of nicotine on uc & crohn's is immediate.
Posted 6/29/2015 3:05 PM (GMT 0)
This article says smoking increases proteobacteria- doesn't decrease; but they did this study on healthy people.
journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0059260
Posted 6/29/2015 3:22 PM (GMT 0)
Well, SMOKING is different than using pure nicotine in a patch form, and vaping pure nicotine would also be different than using a patch. And that study was on healthy people. That is a great point though, that the reduction could be secondary to the inflammation. I did not get *immediate* relief, but it happened pretty quickly, and the % decrease in population is huge - from 15.74 to 0.11! I have tried to find info on using diet to reduce/increase specific types of bacteria.
I received a free kit from uBiome and am pondering going nicotine free for a few days and then sample again. When I researched nicotine I found studies that show that it affects both your immune system and it also affects bacteria, but most of those bacterial studies were done in Petri dishes, and as we know, bacteria grow very differently in the lab than in situ.

I would love love love to have someone do a study on this with a sample size greater than 1.
Posted 6/29/2015 4:00 PM (GMT 0)
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24636808
Posted 6/29/2015 4:08 PM (GMT 0)
I thought nicotine worked on TNF receptors...might be mixing up my studies. change in TNF signalling could impact the immune response to bacteria....
Posted 6/29/2015 5:07 PM (GMT 0)
Yes..http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21691078 TNF-alpha. And there are more articles out there supporting this.
This study: http://cvi.asm.org/content/11/3/563.full

"Thus, in this animal model of nicotine administration, the nicotine patch efficiently raises the levels of nicotine and cotinine in serum and impairs both the immune and inflammatory responses."

I wonder if it might be acting on both the immune system and the bacterial population.
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