Intestinal flora may bug drugs

摘要

New research has shown that genetically identical rats can develop distinct metabolic pathways that can affect how they respond to drugs. Because rats are so widely used in the early stages of testing for drugs designed to treat human disease, researchers say these results could have serious implications for experiments designed to evaluate new drugs. Researchers at drug giant Pfizer discovered that genetically identical populations of Sprague Dawley rats reared in two different rooms in the Charles River, Raleigh facility developed two distinct metabonomic pathways (Chemical Research Toxicology September 2007). They differed in the way they processed hippuric acid, with one group excreting exceptionally low levels of hip- puric acid in their urine. The group had been reared in a different room and were found to carry a unique composition of gut micro-organisms. And although the Pfizer scientists did not investigate how the difference in intestinal flora might affect drug metabolism, they think it may partially explain why results using presumably identical animals can conflict.