Microbiomania: what we actually know about the human microbiome

[Indigophoton]

The article is written for a general audience by Jill Margo, an adjunct associate professor at the University of NSW, so not technical, but an interesting overview. It mentions CFS as an illness shown in a study to be influenced by the microbiome.

Lance Armstrong may not have tried it, but poo doping is the new item of discussion on the performance enhancing menu.

It turns out elite cyclists have a couple of critters in their gut that might boost performance.

The discovery began three years ago, when Lauren Petersen, a researcher at The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine, in Connecticut, gave herself a poo transplant. She wiped out many of her own gut microbes with antibiotics and introduced into her bowel a tiny amount of faecal matter from a competitive cyclist.

She was trying to treat the Lyme's disease she'd had since the age of 11. Petersen happened to be a keen mountain-biker and a few months later she was able to increase her training and she began winning races.

Each person's biome is as unique as their fingerprints. It's also powerful because it contains more microbes then they have cells in their body. featurepics@fairfaxmedia.com.au

The experience led her to study elite cyclists' faeces, which showed they were more likely to have a rare micro-organism called Prevotella, which helps with muscle recovery, and M. smithii, which helps turn food into energy more efficiently. Her transplant sample contained both those microbes.

When she published her work last year, the potential of poo doping became big news although some noted that science doesn't always smell as good as it looks.

Faecal transplantation is in its infancy. While we don't quite know what is being transplanted, we do know the outcomes are not always desirable. Last year, the Royal Australasian College of Physicians Congress in Melbourne was told there was evidence to suggest transplants could cause some patients to take on the physical and mental traits of their donors, such as body shape and depression.

The interest in poo transplants is just one aspect of the intense international scientific investigation into our gut biome, the collection of micro-organisms that live in our digestive system, with new studies about it being released every few days.

http://www.afr.com/business/health/...ow-about-the-human-microbiome-20180503-h0zku0

Edit: typo.