United States: Intestinal infections which are mainly like stomach flu, can change the bile in your liver and affect your immune system and gut bacteria. Researchers have already discovered that this process helps the body fight off harmful bacteria. 

Or by also studying how the body reacts during all these infections, scientists have found a new way the body defends itself against illness. 

Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital reveal a new understanding of how this stomach substance, bile – which is made in the liver and used to help digest fats, also has protective roles in preventing and killing germs. 

This was a study done on mice, but the researchers argue that what it found could hold true for humans too. Data are disclosed in Nature Microbiology. 

As reported by the Medicalxpress, the changes we saw in the composition of bile with infection are good for the intestine to clear infection,” noted Matthew Waldor, MD, Ph.D., of the Division of Infectious Diseases, Brigham and Women’s Hospital. 

Increased knowledge of the complexity of bile composition is revealed in the light of our data, as well as new information about the part played by the liver in protecting the intestine against infection. These realizations further extend people’s knowledge of the multirole of liver concerning the organization’s homeostasis and metabolism regulation. 

There is scant literature in respect of the peculiar chemical make-up of bile during enteric infection despite earlier studies outlining the roles of bile in absorption of fats and other nutrients. Bile, in this research, the researchers considered that Bile was thought to change functions during an infection owing to the fact that it mediates the communication process between the liver and gut. 

Employing a murine model this study aimed at studying alterations in metabolite levels during an enteric infection using whole organism metabolomics. The mice were infected with one of two pathogens Listeria monocytogenes which targets the intestine, liver and gall bladder or Citrobacter rodentium, which targets the caecum and colon. 

These different infection groups resulted in common and independent alterations of bile metabolites. In addition, the database integrates the results in the bile metabolome description, and hundreds of new metabolites were reported. In more detail, the researchers identified that enteric infection actually alters the bile composition to serve intestinal protection.