Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years. Yacold also

partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for

gut health, an investigator-led research program. To learn more about Yachtold, visit yawcult.co.

.jp. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacult.

This is Scientific American 60-second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber. Got a minute? When patients show up in a

hospital with a respiratory illness, they're usually given an antibiotic, which do not work against viral

infections, even though most of these respiratory infections are viral. It's estimated that in

these cases, antibiotics are incorrectly prescribed nearly three quarters of the time,

and the overuse of antibiotics is a huge problem, helping to drive the development of strains of bacteria that are resistant to our antibiotics.

So scientists have been searching for a tool that would quickly allow doctors to diagnose whether a patient has a viral or bacterial infection,

and thus know for sure whether to prescribe an antibiotic.

The new approach that we take rests on the premise that any time we are exposed to something

in our environment, whether it's cigarette smoke, changes in our diet, an infection,

our bodies react to that.

Ephraim Sallek of Duke University.

He and colleagues investigated gene expression,

which genes are activated and which remain dormant,

in 273 emergency room patients.

Some had a bacterial infection,

some had a viral one, some had both,

and some had no communicable disease at all.

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