All humans have only 3 types of gut bacteria
April 21st, 2011 - 1:00 pm ICT by ANILondon, Apr 21 (ANI): A new study has found that humans have only three types of gut bacteria.
It also uncovers microbial genetic markers that are related to traits like age, gender and body-mass index.
These bacterial genes could one day be used to help diagnose and predict outcomes for diseases like colo-rectal cancer, while information about a person’s gut type could help inform treatment.
We all have bacteria in our gut that help digest food, break down toxins, produce some vitamins and essential amino acids, and form a barrier against invaders. But the composition of that microbial community - the relative numbers of different kinds of bacteria - varies from person to person.
“We found that the combination of microbes in the human intestine isn’t random,” said Peer Bork, who led the study at EMBL.
“Our gut flora can settle into three different types of community - three different ecosystems, if you like.”
Bork and colleagues first used stool samples to analyse the gut bacteria of 39 individuals from three different continents (Europe, Asia and America), and later extended the study to an extra 85 people from Denmark and 154 from America.
They found that all these cases could be divided into three groups, based on which species of bacteria occurred in high numbers in their gut: each person could be said to have one of three gut types, or enterotypes.
The scientists don’t yet know why people have these different gut types, but speculate that they could be related to differences in how their immune systems distinguish between ‘friendly’ and harmful bacteria, or to different ways of releasing hydrogen waste from cells.
If this proves to be the case, when diagnosing or assessing the likelihood of a patient contracting a particular disease, doctors could look for clues not only in the patient’s body but also in the bacteria that live in it. And after diagnosis, treatment could be adapted to the patient’s gut type to ensure the best results.
The study was recently published in Nature. (ANI)
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