E.coliWIKIPEDIA, CDCWe all have trillions of microbes inside our guts, which outnumber our own cells by a factor of 10. Now, a team from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis (WUSTL) has shown that this microscopic community is extraordinarily stable. In healthy people, once these microbes are established in the gut early in life, presumably due to contact from close family members, most strains are unwavering in their presence, staying in the gut for decades or longer.
“We have this part of ourselves that’s assembled from outside but stays inside for decades and decades, and it contributes to our uniqueness as individuals and our health,” said WUSTL’s Jeffrey Gordon who led the study.
Although the team only studied healthy adults, their results have big implications for our understanding of disease, Gordon added. Many studies have shown that conditions such as obesity or autoimmune disorders are associated with dramatic changes in the gut microbiota. But, Gordon said, “if we don’t know what the normal variations are in healthy people, we can’t tell how an individual with disease deviates.”
If these communities are usually steady, it may be possible to monitor a person’s health by analyzing stool samples each year, said Jacques Ravel, a ...
