[hweiee]

Hi, I have 2 questions.

1) I would like to know is there such thing as bacteria or other micro-organisms that are beneficial to wound healing?

2) Do all of these micro-organisms take in oxygen and give off carbon dioxide, like us? Are there any of them that has oxygen as the product of respiration?

Hope you can enlighten me on these 2 qns, or maybe direct me to website or something where I can learn more.


Thanks in advance!

[RickJ]

As for #1: It's a bit more complex than that. Even with the presence of "good bacteria", the bad stuff must still be killed. From here:

"Billions upon billions of live bacteria live within your intestine. Some, like acidophilus, are 'good' and perform many important duties in keeping your intestine healthy, aiding digestion and synthesising important B Vitamins like B12, Biotin, Folic Acid and Pantothenic Acid in the body. More importantly it is the 'good' bacteria that keep the 'bad' ones in check. When you take a course of antibiotics you kill all bacteria, good and bad, and that's when the balance can become upset."

And here are some search results for further reading on "good bacteria".

[kp2171]

No clue about intentional use of bacteria in wounds. All I've seen is the bad that bacteria can do... my guess is that its better at least to have normal flora bacteria in a wound... I know some bacteria can produce antibiotics, but again, I'm too unfamiliar with treatment of wounds with the intentional introduction of bacteria...

The previous post eludes to the idea of "normal flora", where microorganisms that are already present help prevent the establishment of new, potentially "bad" organisms.

An example I was told once was that a toothpaste had been developed that would kill off all the bacteria in the mouth and therefore help prevent bad breath. Well that sounded good until the people testing it got nasty fungal infections because the normal flora wasn't there to prevent the establishment of something new, and potentially "bad" from moving in.

Same thing with antibiotics and the gi tract. Kill a bunch of the normal flora off and then there is "open real estate" for the next "bug" that comes along.

This isn't the same as a puncture wound... but same idea. Common bacteria on the skin get into a puncture wound. Staph epidermidis for ex may cause no problem, but get staph aureus into the wound and it can get ugly.

Not all bacteria require oxygen. Some are anaerobic. Some of these can get into deep wounds where they're not exposed to O2 and cause terrible problems. Clostridium perfringens, botulinum, and tetani are examples. They can use different substrates other than oxygen, and produce a variety of products like the toxins seen with the clostridium.

Like I said above, I have not heard about the intentional use of bacteria to aid wound healing, and while there are bacteria that can produce O2 I believe (think this is believed to be part of one theory on how O2 concentrations could've built up in the earth early atmosphere) I haven't a clue as to what ones these are. Also some bacteria can actually produce antibiotics that would target other bact.

If somebody actually was doing research about putting bacteria into wounds to help healing and/or these produced O2... then those bact. Must not produce anything nasty like toxins, the O2 production might be used to help avoid the establishment of some nasty anaerobics, since many of these actually are killed in O2, or maybe they produce antibiotics that ward off other nasty bacteria. Seems like you'd need to be pretty desperate to intentionally infect someone with a wound with a bacteria... but deep tissue infections can be life threatening so maybe there is work out there on this.

Not saying it isn't done. I just never heard about it in my college level microbiology. Someone that deals with wound trauma research might know more.

[breese]

Bacteria colonization in wound