Non-Antibiotic, High-Protein Diet for Cholera Treatment?

And it’s all food storage? 

Say it is so!

Well, I can’t make that claim.  Wish I could.  But here’s what research published late last year reveals.

Researchers wanted to investigate whether a high-protein diet might help mice infected with cholera.  So the mice were fed casein, a protein found in cow’s milk; wheat gluten, a protein from—you guessed it—wheat; and soy protein from—you guessed right again—soy.

It was found that both casein and wheat gluten dramatically reduced the ability of the cholera bacteria to colonize the gut.[1]  And that’s about all I could decipher from the research published in Cell Host & Microbe.  Maybe it’s because I haven’t had breakfast yet, but it challenged my little brain. 

The article published in Science Daily distilled the results into more easily digested fodder for our brains.  And what the research showed was the casein and wheat gluten reduced cholera bacteria colonization in the gut by up to 100-fold.[2]  That was entirely based on diet—no antibiotics at all.  High carbohydrate and high fat diets were also tested, and had little effect, while the high-protein diet with casein and gluten almost completely prevented cholera from developing.  It was also found that soy protein acted more like a carbohydrate and had little effect. 

Unfortunately, this is only preliminary research.  These effects were observed in mice.  Mice aren’t people.  We hope that more research will be published soon.  But until then, we’ll have to content ourselves with the idea that milk, cheese, and wheat might help someone with cholera.  Hopefully, we and our families will be diligent about our hygiene and food preparations and we won’t contract cholera and won’t have to treat it.  We know, based on statistics, that most of society is not clean and chances are high that cholera will affect our community at some point. 

Having an alternative treatment—one that spares the antibiotics for more pressing needs—is a blessing that only works if people have the resources to provide it.  Might want to have some recipes to go with them.  Telling a cholera patient to suck it up and drink powdered milk that hasn’t had the taste improved or been cultured into yogurt will only add insult to injury. 

Links to related posts:

Cholera 

Yogurt 

Wheat 

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[1] Liu R, et al., Diet modulates Vibrio cholerae colonization and competitive outcomes with the gut microbiota, Cell Host & Microbe, 2025; 33 https://www.cell.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1016%2Fj.chom.2025.11.004&pii=S1931-3128%2825%2900464-0 (accessed 19 May 2026).

 

[2] University of California – Riverside, This diet could slash cholera infections by up to 100x, Science Daily, 7 April 2026, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/04/260406192907.htm (accessed 19 May 2026).