A study carried out on a remote tribe in the Venezuelan Amazon found that it is resistant to modern antibiotics. It is despite the fact that the tribe members have hardly any contact with the outside world.

In the research published in the journal Science Advances, the researchers have studied the gut, mouth and skin microbes in the people belonging to the isolated tribe in southern Venezuela's Amazonian jungles.

From there, the researchers came to know the level at which modern life may have altered humankind's bodily bacteria. The human body is said to be full of bacteria that are important to perform functions including the immune system and to improve the digestion.

Due to modern diet, antibiotics and other habits, a decline has come in the range of microbes present in humans. Until 2009, the Yanomami villagers were secluded from the outside world. They were having the most diverse collection of bacteria that could ever be found in people.

The researchers said that there were even some that have never been detected earlier in humans. It was surprising for the researchers to know the villagers' microbes had antibiotic-resistant genes, including those confer resistance to manmade antibiotics. It was especially surprising as these people have never been exposed to commercial antibiotics.

"Our study suggests that the pre-modern human microbiota was composed of a greater diversity of bacteria and a greater diversity of bacterial functions when compared to populations impacted by modern practices, such as processed foods and antibiotics", said Gautam Dantas of Washington University in St Louis.

Maria Dominguez-Bello, a professor of medicine at New York University's Langone Medical Centre, was of the view that a decline in microbiota diversity could be linked with rise in the past several decades of immunological and metabolic diseases.

The microbial samples of the villagers were compared with a United States group, another Venezuelan Amazonian indigenous people, the Guahibo, and residents of rural Malawi in southern Africa. The researchers found that the Yanomami villagers had twice the number of microbe varieties of the US subjects.

They also had 30 to 40% more diversity than the Malawians and Guahibo.