Hoping for Gut Microbiome Rejuvenation to Reduce the Incidence of Alzheimer ' s Disease

It has only comparatively recently become widely understood that the microbial populations making up the gut microbiome change in abundance in characteristic ways with age. Similarly, that the gut microbiome tends to be different in characteristic ways in older people who go on to develop Alzheimer's disease. It remains to be seen as to whether an altered gut microbiome is a meaningful contributing cause to Alzheimer's disease, such as via increased chronic inflammation, or a side effect of some other meaningful contribution, such as the aging of the immune system. At the least, it presents a novel way to assess risk in older people. We might hope that it will be more than that, and that means of rejuvenating the gut microbiome, such as fecal microbiota transplantation using young donors, will significantly reduce the incidence of Alzheimer's disease. Studies have shown that the gut microbiomes of people with symptomatic Alzheimer's differ from those of healthy people with normal cognition. Now, new work shows that these differences arise early on in people who will develop Alzheimer's, even before any obvious symptoms appear. The science still has a way to go before we'll know if specific dietary changes can alter the gut microbiome and modify its influence on the brain in the right ways. But what's exciting about this finding is it raises the possibility that doctors one day could test a patient's stool sample to determine if what's present from their gut microbiom...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs