Wild gorillas in Gabon eat plants with antibacterial abilities against drug-resistant E. coli

Wild gorillas in Gabon eat several of the same plants traditional healers in the region use, and these plants show antibacterial properties in lab dishes, scientists found.

In a new study, compounds in the bark of different trees showed potency against antibiotic-resistant strains of Escherichia coli, which can cause hard-to-treat infections in humans, including pneumonia and bloodstream infections. The researchers behind the work think these plants from gorillas' diets could lead to promising drugs for people, but much more work is needed to develop such medicines.

In the study, published Wednesday (Sept. 11) in the journal PLOS One, researchers observed western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) in Gabon's Moukalaba-Doudou National Park, recording what plants they ate. They also interviewed people in the nearby village of Doussala, including healers and herbalists, about plants used in their traditional medicine.

Past research by the group had revealed drug-resistant E. coli among gorillas in the park; these microbes can potentially cause disease in humans, but apes can often carry the microbes without symptoms. The researchers wanted to understand how the gorillas host pathogenic E. coli without suffering serious disease, and they hypothesized that it might have to do with plants gorillas eat that aren't crucial to their nutrition — such as tree bark.

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The team identified four native plant species were both eaten by gorillas and used in traditional medicine: the fromager tree (Ceiba pentandra), giant yellow mulberry (Myrianthus arboreus), African teak (Milicia excelsa), and fig tree (Ficus).

"One of the inclusion criteria for the various plants studied in our research was the fact that the selected plant consumed by gorillas was also already used in traditional medicine," lead author Leresche Even Doneilly Oyaba Yinda, a bacteriologist at the Interdisciplinary Medical Research Center of Franceville, told Live Science in an email.