This is the question that FROMSANTE wants to answer. Comité Interprofessionnel du Gruyère de Comté (CIGC, Interprofessional Committee of Comté Gruyère), INRA, ISBA Franche-Comté, Actilait and the Besançon University Hospital Center are involved in FROMSANTE, a project certified by the Vitagora competitive cluster. In the Spring of 2007, a one-of-a-kind experimental cheese was made by the Poligny INRA Center in Franche-Comté, to help find the answer. A cohort of individuals tasted the cheese that came out of the cellars this Spring. The special feature of the cheese is that it is a technological compromise between three renowned cheeses, Comté, Swiss Gruyère and Italian Parmigiano Reggiano. "They are three pressed, cooked cheeses fashioned into 40-kilogram wheels. They are basically very similar technologies," explained CICG Director Jean-Jacques Bret.
FROMSANTE will be observing and assessing the impact of raw-milk cheese on antibiotic resistance activity, i.e., an individual's ability to rebuild his or her immune defenses after antibiotic treatment. In the late nineties, the cheeses ran into some trouble. Cheese-makers have made far-reaching efforts to improve the sanitary quality of raw-milk cheese over the past years. "At that time, we felt it was important to roll out a more constructive approach by showing how raw-milk cheeses can be healthy for cheese eaters." After exploring several tracks, a consensus was reached to study the ability of a raw-milk cheese to improve adaptation to stress, and naturally the antibiotic induced stress was selected.
One study was conducted on a very well-known antibiotic, clamoxyl. The studied showed that raw-milk cheese had the ability to improve an individual's resistance to the unwanted effects of an antibiotic treatment. "The purpose of FROMSANTE is to repeat the first series of studies with another antibiotic, vancomycin, that was chosen because the same antibiotic resistance to vancomycin that developed in the United States is now appearing in Europe. If the effects observed during the first study are confirmed, this would be additional proof of the impact of raw-milk cheeses on antibiotic resistance activity," especially considering that vancomycin kinetics in the intestine are very different from clamoxyl kinetics. Results are expected in early 2009.
