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Could A Dirt Vaccine Prevent You from Gaining Weight?
It’s a long way from mice to humans, but this study is intriguing.
Vaccine hesitancy might take a vacation if a shot could prevent you from becoming obese. Although there is no data on people, the same cannot be said for mice. Small mammals are not identical to humans. However, a very recent study is providing a glimmer of hope. (If you click this link, be forewarned—it is very long and extremely technical.) A shorter and simpler summary may be found here.
The study used a type of bacteria, Mycobacterium vaccae ATCC 15483, which prevented weight gain in mice fed a Western-style diet. This bacteria is a distant relative to the one that causes TB (tuberculosis), and being inoculated (injected) with it won’t give you TB.
Of note, this bacteria lives in cow’s milk and soil. The bacteria was used in mice fed food mimicking a typical Western diet. Half of the adolescent mice were fed standard, healthy chow for 10 weeks. The other consumed the rodent equivalent of Big Macs and fries, with 40% fat, 40% carbohydrates (half of them from sugar), and 20% protein. Half of each group got the bacterial shot.
As expected, the untreated junk food group began to gain significantly more weight at about six weeks than the healthy eaters. By the study’s…
