Listen to Your Microbiome

A person’s microbiome plays a huge role in your ability to fight off disease and thus be able to live a health life. For most people, a mature and developed microbiome is acquired at the age of 3 and this allows this person to be non-immunocompromised. But, when that microbiome is affected and is susceptible to being damaged, a person is then said to become immunocompromised. Being immunocompromised causes this said individual to be susceptible to other disease due to the body not having the correct microbiota that could be used to fight incoming pathogens. With this, the role of the microbiome plays a huge role in the health of an individual and it is important that we learn to maintain a healthy microbiome. Lets look at how this can be done and what may impact it.

From an article called, “The role of the microbiome for human health: from basic science to clinical applications” by researchers looked at how the microbiome plays a role in how our bodies work, especially when looking at the microbiome in your gut. In their conclusion, they state that the microbiome can be influenced by external factors like that of stress, probiotics, diet, and drugs. With this, the way in which you decide to treat your body will have major impacts on how your microbiome will develop. They also concluded that the microbiome is active and not passive, showing that the microbiome is constantly responding to how the host (us) treat and affect it. In the article, they state the one of the newest types of therapies that are used to treat recurring disease is Fecal Microbiota Transplantation (FMT). We will dive into this topic and see its benefits on aiding treat disease and its recently discovered drawbacks that show severe impact on the human body.

In another article titled, “Drug-Resistant E. coli Bacteremia Transmitted by Fecal Microbiota Transplant“, researchers look at FMT more closely and how it does present some severe side effects. By using FMT, specific microbiota can be used to treat infections like that of Clostridioides difficile which can be recurrent in some patients. But, in their study, they found that two patients who had undergone this therapy were able to develop extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)–producing Escherichia coli bacteremia which means that the bacteria were able to become drug resistant. One of the patients died as a result of the drug resistant bacteria that were produced during their FMT therapy and researchers were able to identify risk factors that would have allowed for the bacteria to develop. They found that patients with advanced cirrhosis were more susceptible to this occurrence because of intestinal permeability which would have allowed their microbiome to be damaged. In all, the microbiome is a very sensitive part of human life and is constantly being changed depending on how we decide to treat it. So let’s treat it right by listening to what it has to say.